


The Long Way Down

by matchka



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Meetings, Gen, Jean knows no dignity, M/M, Marco is secretly a sassy little bastard, Time Loop AU, falling in love with your best friend at the most awkward time possible, first meetings the second time around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:59:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 55,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchka/pseuds/matchka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time Loop AU: Jean finds a way to go back in time, and resolves to prevent Marco's death. But things don't go smoothly. Things like being forced to relive his training days, knowing dark secrets he cannot possibly reveal and realising his feelings for his best friend are a little more complex than he first thought.</p><p>And then things start getting really complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [here's my Tumblr](http://hotchiwitchi.tumblr.com)
> 
> Please note the original idea for this AU came from Tumblr artist BarleyTea - I highly recommend seeking out their Time Loop AU artwork.
> 
> In which Jean finds a strange hole in the wall, sticks his head in and sees something unexpected. Then freaks out.

_En Það Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað  
Er Nýr Dagur_

_[But the Best Thing God Has Created_  
 _Is A New Day_ ]

 

 

He’d been staring for the best part of an hour now, crouched atop the wall, limbs pulled in against the wind so he seemed coiled, an ammonite carved from the wall itself. It was barely there – it had been blind luck that he’d seen it at all, staring aimlessly westward from the patrol point; a hole in the wall, not a black and hollow crevice but _shimmering_ , like heat rising off sunbaked earth. Bright against the grey, a mirror set into the stone, reflecting nothing back.

He went to it. Who wouldn’t have? It was their job – the Survey Corps, wings temporarily clipped in the wake of the Female Titan's rampage, bored and earthbound now – to seek out anomalies, and a hole in the wall was about as anomalous as things got outside of Titans using rudimentary tools (“they have the capacity to learn,” Armin had said, eyes wide and grave – he’d been the one to point it out – and they’d made the collective decision there and then not to tell Hanji until they’d confirmed it wasn’t a one-off. The last thing anyone needed right now was Hanji flinging theories and brain-cells all over the damn place.)

Jean hadn’t told anyone where he was going. For the most part, they’d already been occupied. Sasha, Connie and Christa wete playing some card game to which only Connie seemed to know the rules (and even then, Jean suspected he was making them up on the fly.) Bertholdt and Reiner, off on their own at the furthest cannon station, were engaged in a weird, wordless symbiosis that had only grown worse since the Annie incident.  

So, to the anomaly, waxing and waning as he approached, disappearing entirely at times, when the curved circuit of the wall distorted his perspective. When he finally came to it – a point off the usual patrol route, a way out from Trost – he stopped, tilting his head downwards, gazing open-mouthed at it. A hole in the heart of the wall, a near-vertical slit set deep in the stone, with nothing inside but the faint, pale reflection of the sky. Every logical cell in Jean’s brain struck up a chorus – _this is not possible, Kirschtein. You’ve gone insane. Connie slipped something into your porridge this morning. You are not seeing what you think you’re seeing._

But it was undeniably _there_. A narrow opening, a mouth turned sideways; edges ragged, like a deep wound, with nothing inside but that heat-shimmer. And no sound accompanying but the usual hiss of wind in the trees far below, or the occasional cry of a bird somewhere out in the world.

A void in the wall.

It made no more sense an hour later, although the fresh ache in the small of his back and the blisters forming on the pads of his feet afforded a certain clarity. He’d tried staring at it from different angles, tilting his head in improbable ways, walking endless circuits until he was footsore and none the wiser.

It was an impossible thing, but, Jean reasoned, they said there had been a time before Titans, a time when you could live out in the world and never know the sound of their stride, or the sweet carrion stink of their breath, and in Jean’s far-reaching fifteen-year-old estimation that was an impossible thing too.

One thing he knew for certain: he wanted to look inside.

He could almost hear Armin’s voice, even higher-pitched than usual in his exasperation: _‘You can’t just go sticking your limbs in there. You have no idea what it even is!’_ He’d be right, too, and in most circumstances Jean had too much respect for the sanctity of his own limbs – functional and intact, if you please – to engage in such a risky experiment. But this thing, this _void_ , seemed to emanate a power so tangible that when Jean leaned over the wall and reached both hands down, he felt it sluicing up between his splayed fingers like water. It seemed benign enough – warm, like the heat from the last embers of a wood fire. His instincts were usually reliable, but his instincts had never before been called upon to judge a thing like this.

He’d never been the bravest, or the most intrepid, but there wasn’t any other way around it. He had to find out what it was.

The hole itself was perhaps thirteen or fourteen metres down – far enough that simply leaning over the edge wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to abseil down. Jean fired the hooks into the wall and glanced briefly down at the sheer surface, and the ground a long way below. He took a few preparatory steps backward, squinting up at the bright sky, and tipped back, soles sliding against the smooth surface of the wall as he descended; freefalling at first before the reassuring tension of the harness at his waist as the wires took his weight. The void was visible just above him now; his fingers grasped for purchase and found a rim of stone about a handspan in width between the facade of the wall and the mouth of the void. For a long moment he hung there, clinging to the wall by the tips of his fingers, wondering just what the living fuck he was doing. What was _happening_ , and why he wasn’t clambering as fast as possible back up the wall.

 _Too late for that now,_ he thought, staring down at shallow divots in the stone carved by wind and rain and a thousand pairs of scrabbling feet. _You’ve committed to this, insane as that makes you. Time to see it through._

As Jean pulled himself up, his left hand slipped momentarily into the open mouth of the hole and disappeared.

“Shit,” he hissed. He pulled his hand sharply back, hanging from the lip of the hole by one extended forearm. He scanned his fingers for any damage, but they were as they had been; a little callused, nails bitten ragged, but perfectly intact. It hadn’t _felt_ different. It hadn’t felt like anything.

He wasn’t entirely sure whether he was relieved or not.

What to do now? Face to face with the void, it seemed not just unthreatening but _inviting_ , a hot spring on a steep mountain path, or a soft bed after a day of intense training. He saw his own face reflected faintly in the shimmer, strange and distorted, pink at the cheeks with effort. Saw the blue sky above him, behind him; the weather-worn stone cradling the void, and the reassuring solidity of the ground forty metres below.

Anyone watching would have one hell of a time working out just what was going on.

He drew level with the void. Pressed his face as far forward as he could without making direct contact. It would be like diving underwater, he thought. Would he be able to breathe? He looked to his left hand, which was still yet to fall off, or turn green, or do anything at all unusual. It was as good a sign as he was likely to get.

Planting his feet firmly against the wall, he held his right hand up to the void, resting each long finger against the surface; it was warm, pliable, like a membrane, except when he pushed there was no resistance. Like moving through air. His hand slipped through easily as a knife through butter. A sudden wave of panic washed over him but he held firm, left hand clinging to the lip of the wall for dear life. Jean was not strong, and he was not intrepid, but he was stubborn, and if his gut was telling him to stick his damn head in then that was exactly what he was going to do.

He counted three, and slowly withdrew his hand. His skin seemed coated in a faint residue, glittering in the sunlight like a fine spray of water before dissipating, leaving only his hand, intact, and a faint ripple in the surface of the void.

It would have to do.

 

 

 

Jean Kirschtein took a deep breath, filling his lungs with as much air as they could hold, and pushed his entire upper body through the hole and into the void.

*

He emerged on the other side, eyes wide open, fists clenched so tight his nails seemed to be fusing with his palms.

“Kirschtein?”

A voice from his right. He turned, mouth slightly agape. A man sat at a thick wooden desk, quill poised above a sheaf of papers, eyeing him with an expression of complete indifference.

“I asked you a question,” the man said.

The room was familiar but he couldn’t quite place it; it was like seeing a face in a dream and being unable to differentiate between a memory and a trick of the unconscious imagination. The smell of polished wood and Castile soap, and the way the pale morning light filtered through the slats of the Venetian blinds. Tension, like a physical entity; he peered over his shoulder, to the kids gathered in a small, nervous cluster behind him, their expressions alternately jubilant and terrified, trepidation written in the stiff set of their shoulders. He remembered this. Remembered a few of those faces, somewhere in among all the blood and trauma of the past few years.

The man gave a terse little sigh. “I do have a lot of you to get through today,” he said. “If we could please get this over and done with…”

“I, uh, sorry,” Jean said. And resisted the strong and immediate urge to clamp both hands over his mouth, because what had just emerged was not his voice. It was an _approximation_ of his voice, only higher, more childlike. Reedy and pathetic. It was the voice of a boy on the cusp of puberty.

At that moment, Jean realised where the hole in the wall had taken him.

“I’m here,” he said, slowly, testing his new (old) voice as if it were something fragile, “because I’ve enlisted in the Training Corps. That’s right, isn’t it?”

The man at the desk raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “Well, you’re certainly one of our best and brightest,” he said dryly. “Now if you’ll just tell me your home district, we can get you out there and playing with sharp things before the day is out.”

The hole in the wall had somehow taken him back here, to the exact date of his enlisting, and dumped him unceremoniously in the body of his own twelve-year-old self (a quick and withering glance down at his own gawky frame and ill-fitting clothes confirmed his suspicion, much to his discomfiture.) A multitude of thoughts converged upon him, not least the cold and entirely unwelcome realisation that he had no idea how to get back. That thought would have sent panic spiralling through his gut, but in the corner of his eye he caught sight of something that made the breath freeze in his lungs.

Jean was aware that his mouth was gaping but lacked the wherewithal to do anything about it.

“ _Kirschtein_.” The man's voice, growing ever more strident.

There, in the crowd; young, wide-eyed, looking impossibly cheerful at having declared himself willing to become Titan-food at the King’s behest. Jean hadn’t known. Hadn’t realised he’d been there too, on that day, in that room. The boy caught Jean’s gaze and gave a small, quizzical smile.

_Marco._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jean weighs up the relative merits of going back in time to prevent his best friend's death, and Connie is a terrible roommate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone reading this - I hope you enjoy this chapter :)

 

This time, Jean did panic.

Marco’s smile faded at the sight of Jean’s obvious and unflattering alarm. Jean forced himself to look away. It seemed as if someone had gripped him by the neck and was shaking him hard, so that his heart rattled in his ribcage and the breath stuck in his chest. The blood was loud in his ears, surging up and around and pulling every coherent thought back down with it. Later, in the relative comfort of his own bunk, he would wonder exactly _why_ he’d panicked, and would conclude that he hadn’t realised the full, terrifying, wonderful potential of what he had found until he’d seen the blood pulsing in his dead friend’s throat.

But at that moment, all Jean Kirschtein wanted was to run away as fast as he could.

He acted on instinct. Jean pulled – not with his hands or arms but his mind, slipping his presence from the skull of twelve-year-old Jean smooth as an oyster from a shell. And then he was back at the wall, raw fingertips scrabbling at stone, gasping for air as the last filmy threads of void-substance disappeared from between his wide-open eyelids. Just him, the hole, and the wall. Everything else was gone.

Shakily, Jean inhaled, tasting crisp air with the barest hint of wood polish.

Fresh on the heels of his panic came a storm of self-reproach. He’d run away. He’d seen Marco and lost his nerve. There was a limit to the amount of weirdness a man could take in one go, and Jean’s threshold was considerably less than most – he preferred that which could be quantified, measured, _known_ , and therefore conquered (although they frequently joked about Hanji’s terrifying enthusiasm for all things Titan-related, he grudgingly admired the things she did – everyone else was too busy alternately shitting themselves and trying not to get eaten to ask the questions Hanji asked. Armin had once said that if there was a key to saving humanity, it was likely hidden somewhere in the arcane, labyrinthine depths of Hanji’s brain, and Jean thought he was probably right.)

He peered up into the sky. The sun seemed to be in precisely the same position as it had been. However much time had passed in there - five minutes, maybe more - it seemed that barely any time at all had passed on this side of the loop.

“Idiot.” The rapid-fire percussion of his heart had settled somewhat, and what remained of his panic was a lumpen, stupid thing deep in his gut. What had he fled _from_ , exactly, besides the weirdness of the situation – and hadn’t finding the damned portal been the weirdest part? Sticking his goddamn head in a hole to nowhere? Finding himself displaced in time was, frankly, one of the _less_ terrifying outcomes to such an experiment.

But…Marco. Close enough to reach and touch. Breathing. _Alive._

Whatever beguiling force he’d felt from the void seemed diminished now, turned cold by the sheer force of his own cowardice, and although he could at least acknowledge how stupid that idea was it seemed impossible to Jean that he might try again.

The thought seemed less impossible that evening, in the safe, familiar territory of the barracks, with Armin and Ymir discussing the finer, more disgusting points of the Titan digestive system (or lack thereof) over dinner. He pushed over-boiled potatoes around his plate for a while, pretending to listen (and trying, genuinely trying, because every time he closed his eyes he saw the void, felt its warmth creep under his skin, knowing what was beyond, and it _stung_ to think he’d run so fast.)

“Jean?”

“Mhm?” He looked up. The heel of his palm seemed to have left a warm indent in his cheek, he’d been resting on it so long. Sasha, sitting opposite, shot him a look of such genuine, uncomplicated concern that he couldn’t bring himself to crack a food-related joke (not that she deserved it anymore, really; she’d been forced to grow up just as fast and as harshly as the rest of them, but if Jean had to put up with the horse jokes then everyone else had to pull their weight too.)

“Are you feeling all right? You look like you’re somewhere else right now.”

He smiled at that. It must have alarmed her; Jean typically tended towards the surly.

“Yeah.” Poking at beige mush with his mess-fork as if it might transform into something edible, smile fading almost as fast as his appetite. “I guess I am.”

Later still, in his bunk, staring at the space adjacent (where, back at the Trainee Corp barracks – full to bursting with young hopefuls – another bunk would be placed, with the occupants sharing sparse bedspace) he knew beyond doubt that in his haste to escape that place, he had left part of himself behind.

When Marco died – no, _after_ Marco died, nobody saw him die, nobody witnessed the last feeble flutter of his heart, or the last droplets of blood soaking into the earth beneath his broken body – it occurred to Jean that, though he had grown up in a world in which losing a friend to the blunt teeth and grasping fists of a monster was a very real possibility, nobody had ever prepared him for the _reality_ of it. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t experienced loss. Two brothers, much older, dumb as posts - not good enough for the Military Police, not crazy enough for the Survey Corps, they’d joined the Garrison. Both were missing, presumed dead after Shiganshina – their bodies had never been recovered, but that was the way things were after the fall of Wall Maria. He’d been young then, and they’d been away for years before; he scarcely remembered them as anything but taller, more obnoxious versions of himself, and judging by the pictures on his mother’s mantle even that memory was faulty. He hadn't felt pain at their loss, but a peculiar numbness; a small thing, like a single severed nerve somewhere he couldn't quite place. Marco had been different. Marco had been a wound that ached constantly, even now, like an old fracture in cold weather.

He stared at the exposed brickwork peeking through the plaster. Listened to Connie’s low, even breathing in the bunk beneath him. It was lonelier here, somehow; before, when there’d been four or five to a dorm and inevitably, there’d been someone awake at any hour, even the small ones when the night seemed entire and morning felt a very long way off. Always, someone’s voice in the dark, if you called out.

The possibility that he had already fucked up, that the loop had been a one-time deal, had not escaped him; it was that which kept him awake long into the night (and thereafter Connie’s snoring, which no amount of wool-stuffing in Jean’s ears could keep out.) And there was no guarantee, once through the loop, that he could do a damn thing - whether he could change what he'd had for breakfast on any given day, let alone the eventual fate of a human being.

 _If I'm capable of only one brave act in this life_ , Jean thought, pulling the blankets over his head, _let it be this one._

"What did you say?" Connie's voice, thick with sleep, floating up from the lower bunk.

He hadn't realised he'd spoken out loud. "I _said_ ," Jean lifted the corner of the blanket, speaking out into the cold "I don't understand how someone as runty as you can make so much _noise_. You snore like a dying bull."

The split second pause between reply and response suggested Connie knew exactly what Jean had said. Still, he didn't press him. That was the good thing about sharing a room with Connie. He might sound like a combine harvester in the small hours, but he always knew when not to push the subject.

"Dickhead," Connie said, without malice, and promptly fell asleep again.

 _And for fuck's sake,_ Jean added, silently this time. _Please, let me get it right._

*

Jean left before the others, offering no explanation beyond sheer boredom at staring at the same four walls all day - a ripple of shrugs expressed their understanding. Supposedly, they were to alternate with the Garrison at the watchpoints, offering additional muscle should the Colossal Titan show up, but while Commander Erwin's attentions were so firmly fixed on the Female Titan, and Eren's abilities, and the implications surrounding those strange and unsettling events (not to mention Annie herself: Schneeweißchen in her crystal casket, eyes closed and perfectly serene even as the people of Sina worked day and night to restore what she, in her rampage, had destroyed) they had little else to concern themselves with beyond training, and reading, and assisting wherever their assistance was not scorned. And the winged emblem of the Survey Corps tended to spark scorn from most quarters.

("They're ashamed," Eren had said once, when they'd been sharing their frustration on the subject. Strident as ever, and already pink in the cheeks, but talking sense for once; when there was a point to his anger, he could be surprisingly articulate. "Those people who mock us, accuse us of wasting their taxes and achieving nothing...they would rather die than so much as _smell_ a Titan. They're scared to death of them."

"So are we," Jean had pointed out.

"We're all afraid," Eren had agreed. "But _knowing_ that fear and facing the bastards down in spite of it...that's not something just anyone can do. That's why so few join the Survey Corps - you have to be able to look death in the eyes and fight to escape it. Most of those idiots...they'd just shit themselves on the spot and wait to be eaten. And," he'd said, waving his mess fork in the air "that _includes_ the Military Police."

It might have included Jean himself, not so long before, had circumstances not changed his mind, and his course. He still wasn't entirely sure he was glad about that.)

He approached the fissure in the chill morning light, from the ground this time; the barest sliver of pale light visible high in the wall. He took aim; firing the hooks high, he sailed up through the air – cold air biting at his skin, it would be spring on the other side at least – until the pale membranous surface of the void appeared in the upper limits of his vision and he drew towards it, the warped reflection of his face growing ever stranger until it resembled something only marginally human.

Jean braced his hands on either side of the fissure. The crumbling stone was warm beneath his skin, drawing heat from the void, and he thought, _I can still walk away. I don't have to do this._ It was tempting, now that he was face to face with the damn thing, this shimmering funhouse mirror radiating heat and power and the promise of a second chance. Of Marco's life in exchange for three years of Jean's, relived. The sheer responsibility of it was crippling; Jean's guts seemed to coil in on themselves at the thought. And the selfish part of him - the part not even Marco had been able to erase, that sought safety above all things and all others - started up a chorus of doubt: _is it worth the risk? What if I die trying?_

He remembered seeing Marco, young and alive and _happy_ , brimming with the bright, naive optimism that diminished over the years, but never quite disappeared. And, quick on the heels of that memory, Marco's body, blood soaked into the stone, an indelible shadow of the boy who'd died there, alone. (The memory still induced a bilious panic, the uncontrollable tension of muscle, heart beating faster as if to run from that awful image, to pretend it had never happened.) God, he thought, pressing his forehead against the cool stone of the wall, it was worth the risk, worth _any_ risk, to erase that sad and lonely death. Marco had been a good person. That was far more than Jean could say about himself.

Prying tense fingers from the wall, he looked into the void and saw himself, distorted, looking back. His tight-set jaw and grim, shadowed eyes betrayed his fear, and for a few seconds, he hated himself for it. That, as it turned out, was all the motivation he needed to pull himself up, turning his body sideways so he was aligned perfectly with the narrow opening. He crouched there, in the mouth of the void, the welcoming warmth of it crawling beneath his skin and into his bones; a boy approaching ‘tall’ curled and contorted into a space that felt more claustrophobic with every passing minute. With a deep breath, he pushed through into the void, and Jean Kirschtein disappeared entirely.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has read this, given kudos & comments - knowing people are enjoying this fic makes my day. 
> 
> This chapter: In which Jean makes a twat out of himself, and Marco doesn't mind.

"Kirschtein?"

The same man, at the same desk, in the same room. The hole in the wall had brought him to the same point in time as before, and dumped his consciousness into the same gangly-lanky frame (he was less than thrilled about that part.) And this time, although his heart still beat a little too hard, and a little too quickly, he knew how to respond.

"Sorry." Damn, that _voice._ "I'm from Trost."

"There. Not so difficult, was it?" He pushed the papers over to Jean, holding the quill out as if it offended him. "Sign your name, please. You do know your letters, don't you?"

Had the clerk been a condescending little fuck the first time around? He couldn't recall; he'd been too busy trying not to lose his nerve back then. His ability to feign confidence when he was actually just about pissing himself had always been his saving grace. Jean plucked the quill neatly from the clerk's outstretched hand and signed his name in the most elaborate, looping cursive he could (recalling, as he did, the handwriting lessons of Lieutenant Lorenz, perhaps the most officious little man who'd ever lived; a man who had opined, with a perfectly straight face, that knowing how to properly compose _and_ scribe official letters was _every bit as valuable_ as knowing where to strike a Titan.) He even signed his middle name, though he hated it, just to bask in the satisfaction of the clerk's bewilderment.

He slid the papers back towards the clerk, held out the quill, and tried not to smirk.

"Go through," the clerk muttered.

 _Thank you, Lieutenant Lorenz_ Jean thought - there was a combination of words he never thought he'd use. He hefted the knapsack at his feet up onto his shoulder and stepped aside, allowing the next young hopeful - a tall, thin blonde boy he didn't recognise – to step up and sign his life away.

Before he left, he turned briefly to the crowd gathered at the back of the room, forming into something loosely resembling a queue. His eyes travelled across their faces one by one, trying to remember where he'd seen Marco the first time he'd come through. He saw Bertholdt somewhere towards the back, taller by a head than almost everyone else in the crowd and looking terribly uncomfortable about it (Reiner would be there somewhere too, no doubt; it was rare to see one without the other, even in those very first days.) Faces of people who'd left in droves when they'd realised they had badly underestimated how tough training was going to be. He'd known some of them vaguely; when you were friends with Marco, you were everyone's kind-of-friend-by-proxy, whether you wanted to be or not.

He scanned the crowd back and forth, heart thudding faster when each sweep failed to turn up so much as a trace of Marco. _I messed it up_ , he thought, gripping the knapsack like he was trying to strangle it. _I had the chance and I messed it up. You’re a gutless coward, Kirschtein. What now, then? What the hell do I do now?_

It was at that exact moment that the tall blonde boy stepped away from the desk, walking with the slope-shouldered gait of one who has just made a decision they’re already beginning to regret. And there, behind him, almost irritating in his eagerness, was Marco. He must have felt Jean’s eyes on him because he looked up, saw him standing there, dumbly clutching his knapsack, and offered him a reassuring half-smile: _I have no idea who you are or why you’re staring at me but you look terrified and you really shouldn’t be._ Because Marco – thirteen years old in this ‘when’, head full of aspirations more worthy than Jean’s had ever been - had never seen a Titan outside of heliographs, and probably thought he never would. It would be years before Trost fell and Marco would come to know, intimately, the taste of fear burning the back of his throat, the shadow of a colossal hand casting him in darkness as it descended…

_No. No, let’s not do this right now. Get your shit together._

Marco had turned his attention to the clerk (wonder of wonders, that surly bastard actually seemed vaguely personable now) and Jean thought it would be the simplest thing in the world to stroll up, tear those papers to pieces and tell him to go home, choose another, less risky path. But Jean was selfish. He’d always been selfish. The thought that Marco might never be a part of his life – that they might live to be old without ever having become friends, that the half-smile would be the first and the last time – no, if Jean was willing to put himself in harm’s way to save him, then he wanted to be there when it was all said and done. He wanted to stand with the others when they welcomed him home.

While Marco was distracted, Jean took the chance to slip away quietly, forcibly banishing all thoughts of Titans (and dead friends) from his mind as he went.

*

Certain things were easier with the benefit of hindsight, and whatever scant maturity Jean had attained between his twelfth and fifteenth year. Chief among those was dealing with Keith Shadis, whose bellowing, intimidating presence was a trifling concern compared to his inclination to manhandle students who failed to meet his expectations. (That one had been Jean’s fault: it probably hadn’t been all that wise to be so blunt about his intentions – even though he _knew_ , and Shadis knew, and every single person in that lineup knew that he was far from alone in aiming for a life of safety.)

There was something bittersweet about reliving that first day. Over the years, they – those who’d gone on to graduate – had changed, grown, become harder and shed their innocence like an old skin. There was a reason they clung to all those old jokes, long out of date – Sasha and the potato incident, Bertholdt’s inability to hold a conversation without blushing, Annie kicking Reiner’s ass in training (they’d never been close, he and Annie, but it hurt to see her as she’d been – quiet, aloof, except in combat when she seemed to come alive, fierce and strong and yes, beautiful, in her way.) Trost had taken a heavy toll on each of them, forcing them abruptly into adulthood; men and women not yet grown, but already familiar with loss, and terror, and the slow burn of a friend’s charred bones cupped in one’s palm. The schism between the children they'd been and the adults they'd become could never be repaired.

In the moments before Shadis approached him, he wasn’t sure whether he should play his part the same as before (headbutt be damned) – would new events be set in motion if he strayed from the established narrative? _But_ – a tentative glance at Marco, standing beside him just as he had the first time - _this whole venture is about changing the narrative, isn't it? I can't be afraid to do things differently._ He didn't particularly want to become acquainted with Shadis's skull either. When Shadis came around, and it was his turn, his nerves suddenly seemed on edge, his senses overacute. Every sound seemed peculiarly loud, every colour too bright; the combined smell of mud and dust and fresh leather and the nervous sweat of a hundred other trainees caused his stomach to cramp with sudden nausea, and it was all he could do to stay upright as Shadis approached.

"Who the hell are you?" Shadis demanded.

God, his breath was foul. Fermented tea-leaves and some kind of meat, no doubt from breakfast, issued forth on a raft of angry spittle. And the stiff-legged motion of him, sharp and jerky like a clockwork tin-soldier, doubled up in Jean's vision like the aftermath of a blow to the head. The whole thing conspired to send a rush of bile up into Jean's throat, which he choked back down fast enough to reply, voice hoarse: "Jean Kirschtein, from Trost district."

"And why are you here?"

_Because I found a hole in time and I've come back to stop my friend from ending up Titan-food._

"I want to join the Military Police."

"You?" Shadis gave Jean a cursory scan with those dark-shadowed eyes ( _I know what you've seen_ , Jean thought, _I recognise that look now.)_ "You're a trembling little shitstain. What could you possibly have to offer the Military Police, Jean Kirschtein?"

He swallowed hard, and the acid taste in the back of his throat made him gag, and he realised, a little too late, that twelve-year-old-Jean was in his head too, somewhere, frightened and bemused at this sudden influx of twice-processed sensory information and unable to understand why it all felt so damn _familiar_. And then, because he couldn't stop himself, he pitched forward and vomited all over his own boots.

"I give it a week," Shadis said, and moved on to Marco.

It was only marginally worse an outcome, Jean thought dimly, hunched over, retching until his stomach muscles ached; perhaps it might even outshine Sasha's potato shenanigans - soon to unfold somewhere behind him, though the thought of watching it all happen a second time, word for word, made his stomach churn again, and so he squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself not to listen, not to remember.

When Shadis had moved beyond Sasha to the back of the lineup, and Jean was finally beginning to feel in control of his own body again, he felt a warm, tentative hand on his shoulder.

"Hey." Almost a whisper, the speaker acutely aware of Shadis's presence not far behind them. "Are you okay?"

He looked up. Marco, leaning down, apparently untroubled by Jean's vomit-splattered boots. His brow was knotted with concern, mouth turned downwards into a minute frown. Jean tried to speak but found himself at a loss; it hadn't happened this way, back in his 'when', but then Jean hadn't thrown up at Shadis's feet the first time either. All bets were off now.

"He looks really ill," Connie observed, standing beside Marco and peering over at Jean with a kind of benign curiosity.

"Can you stand up?" Marco's hand, a gentle pressure wrapped around his upper arm, easing him slowly to his feet. And it occurred to Jean, as the giddiness threatened to send him sprawling, that the last time he'd been this close to Marco was when he'd carried his body from the cart - so light in death, so _fragile_ , a bundle of bones and skin wrapped in hessian and cradled in Jean's arms - and placed him gently on the pyre, turning away as the kindling was lit and the boy that had been Marco Bodt became nothing more than fragments of charred bone. He shuddered violently, wrenching his arm from Marco's grasp, and he barely had the time to register Marco's bemused expression before he retched, suddenly and painfully. There was nothing left to bring up but his stomach was gamely trying nonetheless.

 _"Really_ ill," Connie said, and turned back to the lineup.

"I'm fine," Jean said, wiping his streaming eyes with the back of his hand. "Just...I need a minute."

"Are you sure?" Marco's frown grew deeper. He reached out a hand to steady Jean and he batted it away, not intending to be unkind, though he knew it would seem that way (hadn't 'coming across as an asshole' been his speciality, back in his 'when'? It seemed some things weren't meant to be changed.)

"I'm _fine_ ," Jean insisted. He'd drawn a small crowd of onlookers now, most of whom appeared to be at least mildly concerned about Jean's wellbeing; he must have looked on the verge of collapse, because even Armin - timid mouse he'd been back then, as uncertain of himself as anyone had ever been - looked ready to jump to his rescue should he fall. Well, it wasn't as if any of them really _knew_ Jean yet. As far as anyone knew, he was young and nervous just like them, and those things were ostensibly true, although his nerves were for an entirely _different_ reason.

Marco was still poised as if to reach out, and it seemed he was about to speak again. Something in the twitch of his jaw as he swallowed, and Jean was suddenly at a loss to explain just why he was paying such close attention. The sound of Shadis approaching prompted them to straighten up and look sharp, concern forgotten, each and every one eager to make a good first impression.

Later, when Shadis's induction was over and they'd retired to the barracks, Jean scrubbed his boots clean at the water pump, occasionally looking over at the small group amassed on the mess-hall porch. They were watching in fascination as Sasha ran laps. He hadn't seen it the first time round, and he had to admit her stamina in the face of adversity was really quite impressive.

His sickness had abated since his (frankly embarrassing) encounter with Shadis, and he could think of no other reason for it beyond sheer disorientation; whatever remained of his twelve-year-old self had panicked at the overwhelming deja vu, and Jean could scarcely blame him for it. Subconsciously identifying a stranger as one’s best friend, and seeing visions ( _memories_ ) of his dead body aflame would frighten anyone.

In the periphery of his vision he saw Marco approaching from the far end of the porch. Carefully, he wove the damp shoelaces back through his boots, concentrating as best he could on achieving some kind of symmetry. It was going to be strange. It was _always_ going to be strange, conversing with people who ought to be strangers but weren't; people Jean Kirschtein, at this point in his life, should know nothing about. He had to embrace the strangeness, dive in headfirst and above all, he had to silence that quarrelsome little voice in the back of his mind which told him, over and over, _I shouldn't know these things._

"You look a little better now," Marco said. He was tentative, but not shy, standing with a kind of relaxed confidence that put Jean at ease (just the way it had the first time.) He leaned on the balustrade, watching over Jean's shoulder as he finished lacing his boots.

"Yeah." A pause. Jean slipped his left boot on, secured the laces with a neat little knot. "Um, about earlier. I'm sorry I snapped at you like that."

"Don't worry about it. You were feeling rough. I'd probably have reacted the same way."

 _I really doubt that, Marco_ , Jean thought, pulling on the other boot. He leaned back against the balustrades and peered up at Marco, directly above him now. In Jean's memory, it seemed that Marco had always been sixteen, and standing here now, observing him without distraction, he realised he'd been right. Though he must have turned thirteen only recently, he seemed much older; there was a calm maturity about him that belied the rounded angles of his face and his large, dark eyes.

"Still," Jean said. "I shouldn't have been such an asshole."

Marco smiled a little. "I think dinner's almost ready," he said, indicating the mess hall with a nod. "You really should eat something. You must be hungry."

Jean's face contorted into its customary scowl. "I doubt that pigswill is going to do me much good," he said, but headed around to the front of the porch anyway. The others had begun to file inside, occasionally glancing at Sasha as she passed by. She was looking a mite wobbly now, arms hanging limp at her sides, but still going nonetheless.  

"I'm sure it won't be that bad," Marco said, as Jean came up the stairs.

His optimism always had been kind of charming, Jean thought, remembering the first time they'd all set doubtful eyes on the vegetable stew-mush and rock hard bread rolls (which made lethal projectiles - useful in the event of a disagreement, if neither party felt inclined to use their fists.) The food had improved over time, along with their culinary skills, but apart from Connie and Sasha occasionally raiding the officer's pantry, the paucity of ingredients never did.

They headed into the mess hall together, grabbing bowls and joining the end of the queue. The panic was gone, at least for now, and it seemed to Jean that it was because this felt _right_ , and comfortable in a way that even past-Jean comprehended. Almost as if he and Marco were always meant to be friends, no matter the circumstances. He pushed that thought away; there was something trite and embarrassing about it.

"I'm Marco, by the way."

 _I know,_ he thought, staring down at the bowl in his hands. _You're thirteen years old. You're from Jinae, in Wall Rose. You keep a portrait of your family tucked into the pages of a book, and you almost kill Franz when he takes the book without asking. It's the first and last time I ever see you really upset, and you never explain why. You die alone. I'm not going to let that happen this time._

He didn't say any of that.

"Hi Marco," he said. "I'm Jean."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jean endeavours to do things a little better the second time around, and Marco's a sassy little shit.

He didn't fight with Eren this time.

It wasn't because he'd grown to like him, although, if pressed, he would admit a grudging respect; an almost-admiration for the way Eren handled the immense pressure of being 'humanity's saviour' - _including_ the times he lost it entirely, because those times were the most honest, the most human. Funny, how achieving near-invulnerability made a person feel all the more vulnerable.

He didn't fight with Eren because it seemed pointless now, knowing how things turned out. That Marco's death, and the destruction of his home town, and all the deaths that followed would eventually force him to concede Eren's point. He ate quietly, listening, observing the way half of Eren's enthralled crowd (Marco included) seemed to hang on his every word while the other half - made of more cynical stuff, it seemed - stared at him, a little dumbfounded, like he was a madman proselytising on the street corner. Eren’s starry-eyed idealism was still as irritating as it ever had been, but reality would kick him in the pants soon enough. Let the kid enjoy it for a while.

Jean turned his attention back to the food. Marco had been right. He was starving. The vegetable mush was no more appetising now than it had been three years ago, but he’d grown used to it. He finished his own bowl, and ate half of Marco's while he was over listening raptly to Eren Jaeger's one-man show. When Marco eventually returned, abuzz with excitement, he saw the half-empty bowl and frowned.

"It was Bertholdt," Jean said, motioning down the table with one hand to where Bertholdt sat, oblivious.

"You know him?" Marco slid in beside him.

“I, um. Not really. Just his name.” It was only _sort of_ a lie; even though they’d been teammates for years Jean didn’t know much about Bertholdt at all. His relationship with Reiner was sometimes prohibitively insular; he knew the boy was shy, and spoke very little, but was relentless out in the field, where he seemed to shed his self-consciousness with ease. Jean envied him that, a little.

“I guess he probably needs more food than the rest of us,” Marco said, with a shrug. He grabbed his spoon and went to work on what was left of the stew. Jean watched his face contort into a grimace as he swallowed the first mouthful. “You were right,” he said, turning to Jean with a look of mild horror. “This really is bad.”

“I’m right about a lot of things,” Jean said, deadpan.

Despite the stew’s astringent aftertaste, the corner of Marco’s mouth quirked up into a smile. “Is that so?”

“Not _everything_ ,” Jean said, by way of clarification. “But most things.”

“You have amazing powers of foresight,” Marco suggested.

 _You have no idea,_ Jean thought.

“That's a fair assessment,” Jean said.

Marco scraped the last dregs of vegetable mush into a heap at the bottom of the bowl. He looked up at Jean with innocent eyes. “Well, then,” he said. “I’ll have to come to you whenever I’m in need of advice. What with your amazing powers.”

 _Little bastard’s sassing me already._ Jean fought to keep the smirk from his face, feigning utter seriousness, and knew Marco was struggling to do the same.

“Damn right,” he said.

He was vaguely aware that, a few tables away, Mikasa was getting to her feet, and a flush crept up his neck as he recalled their unfortunate first meeting – Jean, blunt as a sledgehammer but never good with feelings of any kind, and _never_ good at conversing whilst under the influence of hormones. There was an error he didn’t intend to repeat the second time around. She walked past their table, moving with grace and poise and – which was more – a complete lack of awareness of the effect she had on everyone around her. And it _was_ everyone. He hadn’t realised it back then, but Mikasa seemed to inspire a kind of quiet awe in people, a sense of _smallness_ , like they knew they could never amount to even a fraction of what Mikasa represented. And it was true that for most people, this awe was a chaste fascination, operating under the unspoken agreement that Mikasa was precious and dangerous and not to be touched, or desired. Jean had always thought this so much bullshit, not least because Mikasa was as human as the rest of them, complete with human flaws and feelings. But also because they were _teenagers_ , and thinking the occasional inappropriate thought about the people they spent every waking moment was almost an inevitability.

He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she passed, observing with interest the way others watched her too – with curiosity, mostly, until his gaze settled briefly on Annie, who seemed to trace Mikasa's departure intently – but she caught him staring and he coughed, looked hastily down at his bowl as if the scraps at the bottom had spontaneously rearranged themselves into swearwords.

( _Now there's something interesting,_ he mused. _Annie. I never thought...)_

“ _Oh_ ,” said Marco, grinning a little.

“What?” He was uncomfortably aware of how red he must have looked. His response was perhaps a touch more indignant than he’d intended, and that served only to widen Marco's smirk further – and if it were anyone _but_ Marco he’d have wiped the shiteating grin off his face with a single blow. Time had done little to quell Jean's hair-trigger temper.

"It's okay," Marco said, with a shrug. "She _is_ pretty."

"I don't know who you're talking about," Jean said.

He didn't respond to that. He just sat there, looking up at Jean with what they would come to refer to as his 'get out of jail' look - perfectly neutral expression, eyes just a touch wider than usual. The picture of innocence, and a total lie. Not many people knew that Marco was capable, occasionally, of being an asshole. Jean sighed, scrubbed at his face as if he could wipe the redness away. Let Marco think what he wanted to. It was a better reaction than the obvious second-hand mortification Marco had felt on his behalf the first time around.

"Okay," Marco said, raising a placatory hand. "I won't bring it up again. I promise."

"Fine. Good."

Jean sat in silence for a while, half-listening to Marco strike up conversation with Ymir, who had been sitting at the table behind them. He had a strange talent for drawing even the most taciturn people out. People who, ordinarily, would prefer to be left to their own devices, but couldn't help but like Marco, who made no demands of anyone, allowed any conversation to be entirely on their terms, and received them with a gentle warmth that was not overbearing or false.

People like Jean.

"...and this is Jean," Marco said, patting Jean's shoulder. He smiled, encouraging, indicating an audience which had grown to include Samuel, Reiner, Bertholdt and Franz, with Annie out on the periphery, staring intently at her own hands.

(He found it was hard to look at Annie for too long. The wounds were still fresh, the anger so intense it was almost painful. He looked away.)

"You're the one who threw up at the induction," Ymir said, appraising him with a sweep of her heavy-lidded eyes. "I thought he'd make you run laps for sure."

"Nice to meet you too," Jean muttered.

"Give him a break," Reiner said. "We were all shitting ourselves, and don't dare tell me you weren't, Franz, I thought you'd drown, you were sweating so much." He held out a hand - blunt, thick fingers, farmer's hands - and Jean watched as his own hand was engulfed in Reiner's considerable grasp. "I'm Reiner. This is Bertholdt-" nodding at the boy in question, who was fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt and looking very much as if he wanted to be elsewhere. He offered Jean a wan smile.

"Did you hear that Shinganshina kid talking earlier?" Franz asked.

"Imagine seeing one of them up close," Samuel said, a little reverently.

"I'm amazed he'd still want to join the military," Marco said. "I can't imagine actually _wanting_ to get that close to a Titan again. Not after what happened."

"I heard one ate his _mother_ ," Franz whispered. He looked pale at the thought, and a there was an abrupt silence, each of them wondering, no doubt, how it would feel to lose someone precious in such a brutal way.

Jean said nothing.

Reiner frowned. "He's got balls, I'll give him that."

"You're from Wall Maria too, right? You and that long streak of piss there?" Ymir again, never one for subtlety. She was hunched over the table, resting her head on both hands, looking only vaguely interested. "Did you seem them? How close did you get?"

(Jean restrained the urge to smack her in the back of the head. Ymir said and did things purely for the sport of it, to see how far she could push a person before they exploded. But Christa seemed to like her, and that meant Ymir had _some_ kind of redeeming quality hidden under all that languid spite. He'd have to ask Christa about that some day.)

Bertholdt seemed to shrink, almost visibly, nervous gaze flitting between Reiner's carefully impassive expression and Ymir, who probably wasn't much interested in the answer so much as the reaction. "Close enough," Bertholdt said. It was almost a whisper.

"I think that's probably enough for now," Marco said, a little cautious.

"I just wanted..." Ymir began.

"Question time's over," Jean said, shooting Ymir a warning look. She responded with a shrug; Ymir, to her credit, was largely without fear for people and Titans alike. "You want the gory details, go annoy Jaeger. He'll crow about it as long as you like."

She looked away, indicating that she'd lost interest in the conversation. The awkward hush that had fallen over the table suggested everyone else had too. "Hey, Annie," Ymir said. "I think we're sharing a dormitory. Want to have a look?"

"We should probably turn in," Samuel said. "I imagine training starts early."

"Five AM," Annie said, in a quiet monotone.

Franz blinked. "That's going to _kill_ me," he muttered.

One by one, the others filed away, wishing one another a good night and passing their bowls to Reiner, who had been assigned to the cleaning team. Eventually, only Jean and Marco were left, and when everyone was safely out of earshot Marco let out a long sigh, pressing his hands to his face.

"I thought there'd be a fight," Marco said, through splayed fingers. "Did you see Reiner's face? I honestly believed he was going to hit her."

Jean shook his head. "He wouldn't," he said, before he could stop himself. "He's protective, but he's not aggressive."

Marco regarded him with mild curiosity. "You seem quite sure about that."

( _You can stop being an idiot any time you want, Jean_ , he thought.)

"Like you said," Jean replied, as casual as he could muster. "Amazing powers of foresight."

Part of him wanted Marco to say he was full of it, to call it for the bullshit it was. A person would have to work very hard indeed to make Marco angry. Jean knew: he'd managed it, once or twice, pushed him so far that he'd eventually snapped. And that was a sight to behold; only when Marco was angry was it apparent just how dangerous he could be, under the right conditions. But he was never angry for long, and after a few hours of avoiding one another he'd be back, unfailingly repentant even though Jean was always the instigator.

For some maddening reason, though, Marco seemed to find even the worst aspects of Jean's personality charming. Mostly. And so Jean wasn't entirely surprised when Marco suggested they turn in too, lest they find themselves roped into helping the cleaning team.

*

_I don't have the slightest idea how I'm going to pull this off._

It was proving difficult to adjust to sleeping whilst surrounded. The hushed, post lights-out chatter, the creak of a mattress as someone turned in their sleep, the soft chorus of sixteen sleeping boys breathing in tandem (and Connie, snoring in the bed next to his - a perversely reassuring sound now.)

Jean was exhausted, but sleep felt a long way off.

In the absence of other distractions, he'd found himself contemplating exactly how he intended to prevent Marco's death. There were several unknowns complicating matters, not least the fact that Jean had no idea how Marco had died. If there were a definite scenario he could prepare for, a string of events he could interrupt...

But he didn't know. And in spite of everything, he couldn't quite bring himself to implicate Annie. He understood how Eren had felt; it was why he hadn't reprimanded him for letting Annie go at the last second. No matter how pragmatic Jean tried to be, no matter how many times he looked at the facts, the idea that Annie had been involved in Marco's death seemed physically impossible to believe. They had all been teammates. Comrades. They'd shed blood together, traded bruises, watched their friends die. It was true that Jean and Annie had never been especially close, but _Marco_...Marco was everybody's friend. Everybody's brother.

_But I have to consider it a possibility._

Along with a whole raft of other possibilities. If only he could speak with Armin, run theories past him and see what clicked. Jean had superb instinct, but Armin could look at an incomplete puzzle and know exactly what was missing. It had never really mattered whether Armin could fight or not (although he could - not as strong or as fast, perhaps, but _smart_ , dangerously so.) His mind was exceptional. But the missing piece was frustratingly out of reach, and he was just so _tired_ …

"Jean, stop _kicking_!"

“I am not _kicking_ , Connie, you keep rolling onto my foot.”

“You are kicking. You just kicked me in the spine. I’m going to have bruises tomorrow.”

“Then learn how to keep still.”

“Hey.” Marco’s voice, disembodied in the dark and barely louder than a whisper. “Keep it down. You’ll wake everyone up.”

“Will you tell Jean to stop kicking me then?”

A sigh. Then, after a moment: “Look, how about we swap places, Connie? Just for tonight. Maybe you’re both just irritable. It’s been a long day.”

“Fine by me. Hope you’ve got shinpads, though.” There was a rustle of bedclothes, and Connie got up, grey and ghostly in the gloom. The bunk creaked beneath his slight weight. Then Marco, wearing his blanket around his shoulders, pillow held against his chest, shuffling around Connie with the awkward stutter-stop motion of someone trying, and failing, to move quietly. He sat down on Connie’s bedroll.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked, quiet.

“Guess so,” Jean replied. A sudden yawn threatened to split his face in two. When he opened his eyes again, Marco was curled up and bundled in bedding, looking, in the dark, like he was half-boy, half-blanket.

“If there’s something worrying you, you can talk to me about it. I mean, I know you don’t know me very well, so I’ll understand if you’d rather not. But you can, if you want to.”

Memories of long, dark nights flooded in uninvited. Of the way Jean had talked, and Marco had listened, and hadn’t laughed, not once. How even the steady rise and fall of Marco’s chest as he slept seemed to calm him, because Marco was there, and Marco was the only safe thing Jean had. Only now, with Marco here beside him, safe and warm and real, did Jean realise how badly he’d missed him.  

Jean’s heart gave a painful little stutter.

“I’m not worried about anything,” Jean muttered.

“You look worried,” Marco said. And then he yawned too, rubbing sleepy eyes with the back of his hand. “Well,” he said, pulling the blanket up to his chin. “If you do feel like talking, I’ll be here.”

 _I know you will_ , Jean thought. _You always were._

“Goodnight, Marco,” Jean said.

His smile was faint, but definite.

“You too, Jean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't thank you all enough for the sweet comments and kudos - I'm always nervous when writing for a fandom I've never written for, and it means a lot to know there are people out there enjoying this. I hope this chapter lived up to your expectations :)
> 
> Next time: Angst galore. Hold onto your hats.  
> (Update: Angst is likely, but there's also an 80% chance of stupid trainees being stupid and - hopefully - kind of adorable.)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which stupid children play stupid games, and Jean ruins it by being an asshole. Thank goodness for Marco.
> 
> *
> 
> “You’re my friend,” Jean said, a little tersely. “I don’t see how anything else is important.”
> 
> Marco smiled tiredly.
> 
> “You’re my favourite idiot,” he whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there was going to be angst here, but I wasn't feeling well and so warming, soothing fluff (with a side of angst) happened instead.

_Þú segir aldrei neitt_   
_Þú ert ísjaki_   
_Þú ert isilagður_   
_Þú þegir þunnu hljóði_   
_Og felur þig_   
_Bakvið_   
  
_Þú kveikir í mér_   
_Ég kveiki í þér_

*  
  
 _You never say anything_  
 _You are an iceberg_  
 _You are covered in ice_  
 _You hold your tongue_  
 _And hide yourself_  
 _Behind_  
  
 _You ignite in me_  
 _I ignite in you_

*  
  
  
  
The following weeks were a mess of bruises, grazes, the occasional bloody nose and nights spent contorted, trying in vain to sleep against the persistent wail of overstretched muscles. Jean had forgotten that this body hadn’t benefitted from three years of training. He’d also forgotten just how extensive the bruising was after using the 3D Manoeuvre Gear in the first few weeks – great yellow-black welts that seemed to bore all the way down to the bone. The slightest touch would induce an intense flare of pain, and so the trainees had invented (as they had before) a sadistic little game in which they would creep up on their unsuspecting victims and slap them hard on the back. Points were awarded based on stealth of approach and how loud the victim yelped. A full ten points were awarded if the victim leapt to their feet.  
  
The game had been Thomas’s idea, and was enthusiastically supported by most of the trainees. Even Annie had joined in, just once, thumping Mikasa hard on the back with the heels of her palms. Mikasa hadn’t yelped, although she had whimpered, glaring up at Annie with teeth bared, and Jean wasn’t sure what the bright spark of pleasure in Annie’s eyes signified.  
  
It was proving near-impossible to provoke a reaction from Jean. A combination of sheer bullheadedness and having dealt with the pain (and the stupid game) for several years had left him….not invulnerable, exactly, since it still hurt every bit as much as it ever had. But the pain was not new, and he’d had worse, and in any case it was fun, watching their bewilderment as they failed to elicit anything but a hiss through tightly-clamped teeth.  
  
The problem with this, Jean found, was that all it did was encourage them to gang up on him, and hit him harder. Each of them wanted to be the first to break him; he’d heard rumours that Connie and Thomas had announced a hundred-point bonus to whoever succeeded. And so, by the end of the fourth month of training, he had a constellation of palm-sized bruises scattered across his back and shoulders, a palette of colours ranging from faded yellow to fresh, ugly purple.  
  
“You should just give in,” Marco said, inspecting Jean’s shoulders with genuine concern. He’d been attempting to get dressed post-shower and Marco had grabbed him, very gently, by the shoulders, prodding at the bruises with a tentative forefinger.  
  
The unwritten rule was that the showers were a safe zone, and that was partly because the one time someone had tried to ‘attack’, their victim had been so startled he’d slipped and almost cracked his head clean open on the tiles. There was also the matter of certain delicate body parts, and the potential for harm should a startled person accidentally lash out – the mere possibility had caused several of them to wince, and the showers were officially off-limits, to be enforced by immediate deduction of all points earned thus far. (Armin, cleverly, had declared himself tally-keeper, and had gone from ‘easy target’ to near-immune in a matter of hours – nobody wanted to run the risk of having points mysteriously disappearing.)  
  
“Why would I do that?” Jean said.  
  
“Because eventually, you’re really going to get hurt.” Marco’s hands were warm, alleviating the chill of damp skin in the cool evening air. It was almost pleasant to feel his fingers working over the bruises, counting each individual mark. Jean arched his spine a little to better accommodate Marco’s exploration, and realised what he was doing a half-second later.  
  
Jean batted Marco’s hand away and shrugged his shirt up over his shoulders.  
  
“Not going to happen,” he muttered, buttoning his shirt with suddenly-clumsy fingers. “So stop worrying about me.”  
  
“Jean, you don’t always have to be stubborn. What are you out to prove?”  
  
I’m out to save your life, idiot, he thought, glaring at Marco. “It’s just a stupid game. Nobody’s going to get hurt, least of all me. You think I can’t take Connie hitting me with those limp noodle arms?”  
  
“I didn’t say that,” Marco said. He gathered up both their towels and dropped them onto the laundry pile with a weary sigh. “If it’s just a stupid game, why are you trying so hard to make everyone think you’re invincible? I hate to break this to you, Jean, but you’re not. You’re like this in manoeuvre gear training too. You’ve got it in your head that you can’t possibly get hurt, but you throw yourself around up there so fast I can barely keep track of you, and…” he trailed off, watching as Jean finally fumbled through the last few buttons and stood, picking his waistcoat up off the bench. He glanced at Marco for a moment, saw his eyes, saucer-wide and earnest.  
  
“….I’m just worried,” Marco finished. “About you.”  
  
There were several things Jean wanted to say in response, about how if he didn’t get smarter and faster and stronger – until he could sail through the skies as easy as Mikasa, hit as hard as Reiner, spot an opportunity to strike as quickly as Annie did – he might as well call the whole thing a failure. Because Trost had been an unmitigated fuckup, a churning whirlpool of young blood and torn flesh and teeth glittering on sunlit cobbles, and Jean had played his part in that: too gutless, not good enough when it counted the most.  
  
They seemed to think he was some kind of bizarre manoeuvre gear prodigy: a ‘natural talent’, they said, but he couldn’t even bask in the praise because it was as close to cheating as a person could come without technically cheating. Exhibiting perfect inertia during initial testing, and near-perfect balance once they’d started moving (he’d underestimated just how skinny he’d been in those early days; he lacked the weight to keep himself anchored.) And praise was all well and good, but it didn’t mean a damned thing if he didn’t get any better.  
  
(He’d told Marco about Jaeger’s faulty manoeuvre gear – after watching Eren land square on his face at least twice, because although Jean had grown up some, he hadn’t grown up that much. And of course, Marco, always a goody-goody, had gone straight to Shadis and pointed the error out, like Jean had known he would. He still didn't really know why he'd done it. Not to help Jaeger; confidence wasn't a commodity the boy lacked, at least not in those days. Maybe he was getting soft.)  
  
"I'm running out of ways to put this, Marco," Jean said, "so I'm going to be blunt."  
  
"You're always blunt," Marco said.  
  
"You don't have to worry about me. Ever. I can handle myself. I've..." He caught the words between his teeth before they could emerge: I've done this all before. "I'm not going to do anything I'm not confident about. Anyway, Mikasa's a hell of a lot more ambitious than I am, and I don't see you chasing after her, telling her to be careful."  
  
"Mikasa is Mikasa," Marco said, as if this were sufficient reason.  
  
"And I'm me, and I might not be Mikasa but I know what I'm capable of. And, believe it or not, I know when to quit."  
  
Marco's gaze fell to Jean's shoulders, watching the stiff motion of his arms as he attempted to slip the waistcoat on without disturbing the bruises. His face contorted into a frown. Sometimes, Jean was almost certain that Marco was secretly a master of emotional manipulation, because the way he frowned - full downward tilt of the mouth, eyes dark and sad and cast low, towards the floor - it never failed to make him feel like he was a terrible person.  
  
"I'm not convinced that you do," Marco said.  
  
  
*  
  
  
There was another sneak attack during dinner. Three of them, one after the other. They'd probably drawn straws to see who'd get to go last. The pain made his eyes water - Christoph was almost as big as Reiner. His hands were like solid blocks of meat, and Jean was momentarily convinced he'd cracked a rib, striking low down beneath Jean's narrow shoulderblades. He'd gasped that time, a little winded by the impact, and wondered to himself exactly what it was that made teenagers such gleefully vicious little bastards.  
  
He'd barely had time to catch his breath when the third attack came.  
  
The rules - though they seemed to be in a constant state of flux - stated clearly that closed fists were not permitted, but there was no mistaking the crunch of knuckles against bone. Before he knew what he was doing, Jean twisted his upper body around and shot out a fist, grabbing a solid handful of shirt and throat and yanking his assailant down to meet him.  
  
He came face to face with Anton Mehmet.  
  
The last time Jean remembered seeing Anton had been on that day in Trost, helpless and surrounded and exactly the distraction he'd needed to get the rest of his squad to safety. Jean hadn't tried to rescue Anton; he'd told himself over and over in the aftermath that there had been nothing he could have done, that if he hadn't taken advantage of the situation a great many more would have died, and Anton would still have been among them. That it would have been a waste of time, and lives, and that his actions had been justified.  
  
He could still hear Anton screaming, and the soft splatter-crunch of his skull bursting like a grape between Titan teeth.  
  
A sour taste rose in his throat.  
  
"Go on." Jean loosened his grip, shoving Anton away. "Before I change my mind."  
  
He stumbled as he backed away, hand pressed to the livid red mark at his throat. "It's just a game," Anton said, a little peevishly. “It’s fun. You remember fun, don’t you?"  
  
"I don't give a fraction of a fuck about the game." Jean flexed his shoulders, feeling the familiar burn of bruised muscle stretching out over bone. “And when you're stuck in a corner with Titans on all sides and nobody coming to save you no matter how loud you scream, you'll wish you hadn't wasted all that time playing stupid games and acting like fucking children."  
  
There was a sudden, stunned silence, and Jean realised, belatedly, that he'd been shouting. He swallowed hard, forcing down the glut of panic threatening to spill out from between his tight-clenched teeth.  
  
He snatched up his empty bowl and threw it hard against the wall for no better reason than because he could. It clattered to the floor. It didn't make him feel any better.  
  
"That...probably wasn't necessary," Marco whispered. Then: "Jean. Your hands are shaking."  
  
He looked down. Marco was right. Jean drew his arms back, tucking his hands in at his sides. He blinked slowly; visions of Anton Mehmet's black, screaming mouth and bright red teeth filled the black space, and his eyes shot open again, seeking the safe, familiar territory of Marco's face. Marco seemed to be oscillating between concern and confusion, taken aback by Jean’s sudden aggression. (He hadn’t fought with Eren half as frequently this time – they had fought, a couple of times, but Jean’s heart hadn’t really been in it, and Eren’s temper fizzled out pretty quickly without anyone to fan the flames.)  
  
It wasn't Marco's fault. And, truthfully, it wasn't Anton Mehmet's fault either. They'd all played this game eagerly in the early years, used it as a conduit for all their frustration and aggression; the girls just as violently enthusiastic as the boys. Because they were children, more or less. Even those who’d lost their hometown years before weren’t completely jaded yet.  
  
He was on the cusp of apologising when Connie’s voice broke the silence.  
  
“One hundred points to whoever gets Jean,” he said. His defiant grin showed just how little he cared for Jean’s personal feelings on the matter. He smirked at Jean: You are not going to spoil my fun, dickhead. “And an extra fifty points if they don’t get a black eye afterwards.”  
  
*  
  
The rest of the evening passed without incident. It seemed Jean’s outburst had put a dampener on everyone’s enthusiasm for hitting one another, and Jean still hadn’t quite worked his way around to apologising – Anton had been shooting him wounded looks all evening, and though Jean felt guilty about the whole thing he didn’t suppose it would do much good. And it wasn’t as if he could really explain why he’d snapped: Hey, Anton, about earlier. I didn’t mean to be a dick about things, but I’ve seen thirty percent of the people in this room die and that doesn’t do a lot for your sense of humour.  
  
Besides. Closed fist were against the rules. The little shit knew that.  
  
Jean had been sleeping better recently. He assumed it was down to Marco’s presence. After a few nights of listening to Connie and Jean snipe at one another Marco had valiantly volunteered to swap permanently. Jean had pretended he wasn’t bothered but he’d never slept so soundly as that first night with Marco beside him, watching Marco’s lips form silent syllables as he dreamed. He fell asleep to the soft hiss of Marco’s breathing and it felt as if it had never been any other way but this.  
  
Every night since, his sleep had been relatively peaceful, battered body notwithstanding.  
  
Jean shifted on his bedroll and inhaled sharply through his teeth as he rolled over onto a fresh bruise. His fingers felt their way to the source of the pain and clashed, unexpectedly, with someone else’s hand.  
  
“Still sore?” Marco’s voice, quiet. He pressed both palms flat against Jean’s back. His skin felt warm even through the fabric of Jean’s vest; his fingers spread out over his bruised shoulders the way they had earlier, exerting a gentle pressure. Jean flinched instinctively, but the pain never materialised; Marco’s fingertips pressed into his sore muscles, just hard enough so that a shudder of pleasure ran the length of Jean’s spine.  
  
Jean’s fingers closed around Marco’s wrist.  
  
“What are you doing?” he hissed.  
  
“Massaging your back, idiot,” Marco replied, voice low, breath warm against Jean’s ear. How had he managed to get so close without Jean realising? Marco’s hands returned to his back, moving in slow, firm circles, and although it felt good – because it felt good, because associating Marco with something this physically intimate didn’t feel as wrong as it ought to have – Jean tensed, tried to wriggle away but there was nothing but wall in front of him, and Marco behind him. Hot blood rushed to his face and he wasn’t sure why, because all his instincts were telling him that this was a good thing, and that Marco’s hands were bordering on the magical. And just when it seemed like he’d reached the very pinnacle of confusion he felt Marco’s hands withdraw, leaving his back suddenly and unexpectedly cold.  
  
“Hey…”  
  
…and then Marco’s hands came down, hard this time, making sharp contact with the bony parts of his shoulders. And although it wasn’t nearly as painful as when Anton struck him, the sheer shock of it made him yelp out loud.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
Almost immediately, the dormitory erupted into rapturous cheering. Jean clamped his hands tightly over his mouth. It took a few seconds before he realised what Marco – sneaky bastard, clever bastard – had just done.  
  
“One hundred and fifty points to Marco Bodt!” Connie announced, just audible over the cheers.  
  
The flush abruptly drained from Jean’s face. He rolled onto his stomach, propping himself up on his elbows and scowled at Marco, who was smiling – actually smiling, the traitorous fuck.  
  
“Marco,” he said. He didn’t like the edge of hurt that crept into his voice. “What the hell?”  
  
“Don’t be a sore loser, Jean,” Connie crowed. Then: “Everyone, shut up now, before Shadis wakes up and makes us all do laps tomorrow.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Marco said, and he did look it, although he was still smiling; his eyes were bright with mirth. He’d enjoyed pulling Jean’s strings. That wasn’t surprising – Marco always had known exactly which buttons to press, though he rarely did so. It was that kind of power that put them on equal footing.  
  
Still, Jean thought, heart still beating just a touch too fast. That didn’t mean it wasn’t annoying as hell when he did press them. He lay back down, turning his back to Marco, the ghost-warmth of his hands still lingering as the chatter and hubbub died down, fading into the usual white noise of creaking bunks and low breathing.  
  
Jean closed his eyes.  
  
This time, he heard Marco scoot up behind him, and pretended to ignore him as he lifted the corner of Jean’s blanket, sealing the space with his own body. There was a sudden, pleasant warmth as Marco’s hands slipped gently over his shoulders.  
  
“Once was enough,” Jean muttered, yanking his arms out of Marco’s grip, but Marco was stronger, and Jean’s heart wasn’t really in it. He let Marco pull him back, felt the soft tickle of his hair against the nape of his neck as Marco rested his cheek against Jean’s back.  
  
“It was for your own good,” Marco mumbled. “Stubborn idiot.”  
  
"You're an idiot." Which was about as childish a retort as Jean could have thought up. It had the desired effect, though; he felt Marco's low chuckle as a gentle reverberation in his ribcage.  
  
"You confuse me," Marco said. His tone was hushed so Connie wouldn't hear, but there was no need. Connie had already begun to snore, a soft rumble that would build, eventually, to a crescendo. "Sometimes you're laid-back, and even though you can be kind of abrasive...it's like you're glad to be here. Like you're glad we're here." He scooted away, then, and Jean understood that they'd reached that unspoken, unspecified time limit in which a hug between friends had to end, abruptly, before it became awkward.  
  
(It occurred to Jean that he hadn't been anywhere close to feeling awkward. Like hell was he going to say anything about it, though.)  
  
Marco lay on his back, hands pillowed beneath his head, staring up at the ceiling. Jean turned to face him, pulling the blanket to his chin, hoping to keep in some of Marco's residual warmth.  
  
"And sometimes," Marco continued, "it's like someone flips a switch and you become so serious. Angry, sometimes, and I don't understand why. It's like there are two completely different sides to you, and from hour to hour it's never certain which one you're going to get." He paused, chewing his lip thoughtfully. His profile was outlined in grey, lit by the wan moonlight trickling through the gap in the door. "Is this really what you want to do, Jean? Spend the next two and a half years here? Because if that's the case, you're kind of stuck with us."  
  
Jean stared at him in mild wonderment for a moment.  
  
"God," he said, without malice. "You really are an idiot."  
  
"We've established that," Marco said, ever patient. "But what about you?"  
  
Marco, Jean thought, you have no idea how far down my idiocy goes.  
  
"Are you certain that this is where you want to be?"

Jean closed his eyes. Marco was astute, attuned naturally to the feelings of others, and to deciphering what lay behind them. And he’d come closer than he’d realised. Because there was a part of Jean that wanted desperately just to enjoy these years, to draw a line under everything that had gone before and start over, do better this time. And the other part – the nagging little voice in the back of Jean’s head that insisted it was honest and objective and therefore right – reasoned that these people, these children, they all came with expiration dates and that no good would come from pretending otherwise.  
  
He couldn’t save all of them. He didn’t want to save all of them. It was callous and selfish and Jean couldn’t find it in himself to care. As long as Marco lived.  
  
“You’re my friend,” Jean said, a little tersely. “I don’t see how anything else is important.”  
  
Marco smiled tiredly.  
  
“You’re my favourite idiot,” he whispered.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, I am ridiculously grateful that people are reading this, and enjoying it. You are a kind and wonderful bunch and I can't thank you enough. I'm over on tumblr as revolvermonkcelot - it's not the most exciting blog in the world but you're all more than welcome to come say hi.
> 
> There was going to be angst and action in this chapter but it was already 3000+ words and...well...next time, I swear.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which an accident happens, and things go sour.

Manoeuvre gear training happened in stages. The first was basic aptitude - "stay upright or piss off to the landfills", as Shadis had described it. Actual practical application of the gear wasn't permitted until the trainees had demonstrated sufficient stamina and physical ability - in other words, until they'd experienced full-bodily exhaustion the likes of which they had never felt before. Until they had bruises on their bruises, and calluses like tree bark all over their hands, and could take being thrown hard to the floor with the bare minimum of writhing, ready almost instantly to get back up and do it all over again.

 

It was almost the end of their first year by the time they were permitted to set foot inside the training arena - an area of forest carefully cultivated, leaving only the tallest trees, with wooden platforms dotted about in a seemingly random configuration. And by then they were, as a group, so sore and tired that it was hard to feel enthusiastic.

 

Before the arena, they'd practised using the gear alone, or in pairs: traversing a custom-built course with obstacles that were constantly rearranged and modified, so that it was almost always a new experience each time. Demonstrations were provided by a woman Jean now recognised as Rico Brzenska - dodging obstacles, clearing gaps and slicing chunks out of rubber Titan necks without so much as a drop of sweat.

 

She was good. Exceptionally so. Not 'Levi' good - nobody was 'Levi' good (save, perhaps, Mikasa, whose abilities were considered so advanced that she'd already been permitted to use blades in training.) But Jean knew he could do better, if he worked hard enough.

 

 _Could_ do better.

 

The purpose of the arena was to learn how to move in groups. How to be aware of the motion of those nearby and adjust one's own trajectory accordingly, paying attention to what was happening all around whilst aiming for a specific target. This was an area Jean had excelled in the first time, and this time was no different, except, perhaps, for a heightened awareness of just how clumsy most of the other trainees were.

 

As if to demonstrate this, Samuel swooped in overhead, misjudged his landing and overshot the platform by a few feet, slamming hard into the trunk of the adjacent tree. The flag he'd been trying to snatch was dislodged by the impact and fluttered to the ground, landing gently on Samuel's head.

 

Those spectating provided a mixed chorus of wincing and barely-contained laughter.

 

"Goodbye, Samuel's nose," Sasha said, a little mournfully. "It was nice knowing you."

 

"Think you can do better, Braus?" Connie had become intensely competitive with Sasha since she was announced the eventual victor of the 'slap-the-bruises' game (called to an immediate halt after Shadis found out and threatened to punish anyone caught participating with latrine duty.) She had already bested him twice at arm-wrestling and had refused a third round, claiming it would be embarrassing to beat him a third time.

 

"You _know_ she can do better," Reiner said. "Compared to Sasha, you're as graceful as a three-legged donkey."

 

"It's not about being _graceful_ ," Connie said haughtily. "It's about being _efficient_. Using the tension of the wires to move faster and better conserve fuel. Adjusting your downward trajectory so as to combine your body weight and momentum, maximising damage to your target." He shrugged, as if it were common knowledge. "That kind of thing."

 

Reiner looked genuinely impressed. "Where'd you learn that?"

 

"I read it in a book," Connie said.

 

Sasha let out a peal of merry laughter, wrapping an arm around Connie's shoulders and squeezing, perhaps a little too hard. "Connie, you don't read books," she said. "You said the print gives you migraines."

 

"Actually," Armin said, looking up momentarily from adjusting his buckles. " _I_ read it in a book, and Connie overheard me discussing it with Jean. But I'm impressed that he remembers it."

 

Two trainees scurried along the arena floor bearing a stretcher. All activity halted as they made their way to Samuel, easing him gently up from where he sat, waving the flag in one bloody hand and yelling "This still counts, right?" Shadis blew his whistle: the trainees currently in the arena responded immediately to the signal, descending to ground level, unbuckling their harnesses with almost unanimous sighs of relief.

 

"You're up, brains," Reiner said, giving Connie a friendly pat on the shoulder as he made to enter the arena.

 

"Don't forget to combine your body weight and momentum to maximise your flag-snatching potential!" Sasha called, waving.

 

Connie responded with a hand signal which meant nothing at all to Jean, but apparently was some kind of grave insult among backwards mountainfolk, because she cackled wildly and responded gleefully in kind. "Better catch as many as you can, Springer! Winner gets the loser's dessert!"

 

"Hey Jean." Marco, over on the sidelines, getting ready to go in. "Can you give me a hand?"

 

"Anything to get me away from the goon show over here." In truth, Jean had been enjoying it; he'd grown used to being the butt of jokes, back in his 'when', and it was fun, in a vicarious sort of way, to watch someone else being ribbed mercilessly. What with avoiding Mikasa, not instigating fights with Eren and generally minimising his idiocy this time, he'd found himself a little more on the periphery, and that suited him fine.

 

(There was also the fact that his fit of rage in the canteen a few months ago had left people reluctant to provoke Jean. That suited him fine too.)

 

"Why does everything have to be a contest?" Marco sighed.

 

Marco's harness had twisted at the back, and although he was surprisingly flexible he couldn't quite reach back to adjust it. Jean had nimble fingers, and the strapping-up ritual was so familiar to him by now that he could perform it expertly, even with his eyes closed. He unbuckled the offending strap and worked it around so that it lay flush against Marco's back.

 

After almost a year of training, and having grown a few inches taller almost overnight, Marco had begun to shed the last of his adolescent puppy-fat, showing the strong musculature of his back, and broad shoulders that would eventually make him the most physically powerful graduate after Bertholdt and Reiner. Marco wasn't as fast as some, and though he was adept with manoeuvre gear he was a little too careful in the air, making allowances for the other trainees beyond that which was expected of him. It was his strength and teamwork skills that made him stand out as one of the better trainees.

 

Yet he preferred to avoid combat. Jean couldn't understand it: why wouldn't he embrace his natural talent, use his innate advantages to maximise his Titan-slaying potential?

 

Shit. He was beginning to sound like Connie.

 

Jean slipped the strap back through, buckled it tightly and yanked hard, testing the strength.

 

"Okay," he said. "That should hold."

 

"Thanks," Marco said. He tugged his jacket over his shoulders. "You're on in a few, right? Make sure you check your harness when you strap up. I saw your belt earlier and I think it’s starting to wear out."

 

Jean rolled his eyes. "Yes, mother."

 

Marco grinned at that, and made for the arena, where the other trainees were already taking their positions up on the platforms. New flags had been set out: some were in obvious, easy-to-reach positions. Others were tucked away in awkward locations, designed to encourage the more intrepid (or competitive) trainees to utilise their full repertoire of techniques.

 

Based on ability alone, Marco was second only to Eren in their group. But Marco was not competitive, and where others might have fought to be the best, he was perfectly happy with second place. He was still on course to end up in the top ten at the end of the year, and he'd done it without fighting, or stepping on anyone's toes, or engaging in the kind of petty competition that tended to drive wedges between potential friends.

 

All of which was fine. But Jean felt that Marco needed to learn how to be more aggressive. He’d been thinking hard, trying to piece together a plan out of what little he knew, and the patchy theories he'd formed, and it was becoming increasingly clear to Jean that he couldn’t base what passed for plans around the assumption that he’d actually be in the right place, at the right time. Short of clinging to Marco like a limpet, there was no way he could guarantee it. And if Jean couldn’t be there - if he couldn’t protect Marco himself - then Marco would have to fight.

 

(He didn’t _want_ Marco to have to fight. He wanted Marco untouched and unscathed and if that meant putting himself in harm’s way, then so be it. It wasn’t as if he was enthusiastic about the possibility of being hurt – he wasn’t Eren – but it didn’t scare him half as much as the thought of losing Marco all over again.

 

He had to know that Marco _could_ be aggressive, if it came to that.)

 

"You know," Jean said, as Marco hopped the short distance across the ditch marking out the arena. "Being competitive isn’t always a bad thing."

 

Marco rolled his eyes. "I'm not trying to impress anyone but the instructor," he said.

 

"Of course." He'd expected exactly that response, and did his best to look earnest. "But you've got Jaeger in your squad, and Shadis is going to be watching him like a hawk the entire time. It's going to be difficult to impress him if he's not even paying attention to you."

 

(This was only a half-truth. It was true that Shadis tended to pay Eren more heed than most of the trainees, but Jean had omitted to explain that what held Shadis' attention was Eren's amazing tendency to fuck up multiple times and _keep going_ , repeating the same doomed course of action over and over before finally figuring it out. Eren was not a natural talent like Mikasa. He'd had to work hard at everything he did, fight to stay afloat, and his determination to succeed, odds be damned, was what made him stand out.)

 

Marco seemed to consider this for a moment.

 

Jean indicated Shadis with a nod. "You want to impress him? Do better than Jaeger."

 

"Ah, I can't do that." Shaking his head. "Eren's a lot faster than I am. He's fearless. It doesn't seem to bother him that his chances of getting the flag and hitting a tree face-first are roughly equal. And I like my nose where it is."

 

"Marco, you're good at this. But listen: you don't have to worry about upsetting someone if you snatch a flag from under their noses. That's how this game works. You're _supposed_ to be competitive." He paused, watching Marco stare up at the arena, at the flags pinned up in the high branches. He had to push a little harder, make Marco _want_ to compete. "You want to graduate in the top ten, don't you?"

 

He seemed startled at that. "Of course I do, but…"

 

"Then don't be so timid. Make the instructor notice you. _Prove_ you're good enough."

 

On the far corner of the arena floor, Shadis glared over at Marco and Jean, tapping his wrist in that familiar gesture: _I haven’t got all fucking day._

 

"Please," Jean said, because if Marco had one weakness it was when people asked him nicely, and this was doubly effective for Jean, for whom 'please' and 'thank you' were used only on special occasions.

 

Marco sighed. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Okay Jean. If I score higher than Eren, _just_ this once, will you let me do things my own way?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

He looked somewhere between exasperated and amused. "Will you bet on me to score highest?"

 

"The winner gets a bag of mouldy apples they made Bertholdt steal from that orchard behind the firing range. Of course I'll bet on you. I want to see just how green you go when I make you eat every single one."

 

"What a sweet gesture."

 

Jean smirked. "Get out there and earn your gut-rot, soldier."

 

When everyone was in position - balanced precariously on the very edge of their platforms, with several trees between each trainee - the eerie shriek of Shadis's tinwhistle marked the start of the exercise. Eren and Connie were the first to leap out, both aiming for the same flag; Connie, perched at the north corner of the arena, swooped out and downwards in one lightning-fast motion, missing Eren incoming from the opposite corner by a whisker. Eren, distracted by the near-collision, disengaged the hooks mid-swing, freefalling several metres before firing upwards, hitting the branch overhead dead in the centre and saving himself a tumble to the arena floor.

 

"He's _insane_ ," Franz breathed.

 

"If he lives long enough to make graduation, I'll eat Bertholdt's boots." Ymir waved an arm at Armin. "Hey princess. What are the odds on Eren breaking his neck?"

 

Marco, wisely, had chosen to steer clear of that part of the arena and had climbed high, using a staccato technique Jean had taught him (which he himself had learned from watching Levi's squad training in the days before the 57th expedition.) Moving in short bursts, allowing for more careful, targeted motion. Already, he'd captured three flags and was on the way to a fourth, springing from a tall branch and aiming diagonally so that he arced gracefully outwards, leaving himself time to brace for landing. Watching Marco move like that - all long limbs and wide eyes, every movement precise and considered - was as compelling a sight as Jean had ever seen. He could almost hear the cogs in Marco's brain working overtime as he worked to outrun his competitors.

 

He would be wasted in the Military Police.

 

From the west corner came Astrid, swinging up from the depleted lower branches with a single red flag stuck in her belt. Marco seemed to notice her approach and changed trajectory, firing his hooks down into the trunk of the tree opposite. He plummeted down, legs bent at the knee, feet tucked up against the backs of his thighs, falling like a rock and looking for all the world like he was going to hit that tree head-on.

 

Jean’s stomach performed an uneasy three-sixty.

 

And just as Marco seemed to be on course for disaster he disengaged, firing upwards and backwards so that he swung wildly into the air, gas tanks propelling him almost at a ninety-degree angle up the tree; he cut Astrid off at the last second, forcing her to perform an evasive manoeuvre so she wouldn't tangle herself up in Marco's wires. He snatched the flag on the way up, turning a backwards somersault, the tension of the wires drawing him up and around. It was the first time Jean had ever seen Marco perform a move that acrobatic in training, and as he dropped down to the platform, pausing to tuck the flag into his belt, he seemed to catch Jean's eye from across the arena and smiled, just a little bit, looking exhilarated and a little breathless.

 

"Wow." Reiner, arms folded, standing beside Jean. "Did you teach him that?"

 

"No." And that was the truth. "I don't know how he learned that, but it wasn't from me."

 

"Looks like he's in the lead," Sasha said, pausing from yelling abuse at Connie in broken Ragako dialect. "He's a bit of a dark horse, isn't he? Who knew he could do something like that?"

 

In time, a move like that would be old news, and they'd all be able to perform it without so much as thinking about it. But for the stage they were at - the stage Jean was _supposed_ to be at - it was considered quite advanced, requiring just as much courage as skill, especially in the arena, where flying blind could be hazardous.

 

Connie and Eren had been circling one another like attack dogs, each trying to force the other into giving up. Apparently Eren had tired of this, because he suddenly veered off in the opposite direction, heading past the centre platform and over onto the east side of the arena. Connie seemed to realise what he was doing half a minute later, and let Mikhail snatch the flag they'd been fighting over - blue flags carried fewer points - following a few feet below Eren.

 

There was a single red flag left, hanging from the underside of the highest platform, and Marco had already begun to head for it. He ran the length of his own platform, aiming high; he leapt off the edge, firing upwards. The hooks hit their target with a loud thunk and he turned sharply, angle perfect, arm extended to snatch the flag as he flew past.

 

"Watch out!" Sasha said.

 

"Hmh?" Jean hadn't been paying attention to Eren, climbing up from below, acutely aware of Connie on his tail and moving far too quickly. He swung in a tight outward arc, dodging Connie’s advance by a hair’s breadth, but hadn’t been watching what was happening ahead. He hit Marco hard, shoulders connecting with stomach, limbs tangled; they spun in midair for a moment, helpless, and it was a long moment before Jean realised exactly what had happened.

 

Somehow, in the aftermath of the collision, Marco had become caught in his own wires. One was wrapped around his left arm. The other was taut around his throat.

 

“He can’t breathe!” Sasha yelled.

 

Jean stood frozen to the spot, gaping stupidly up at Marco as he clawed desperately at his neck, face slowly turning purple. Beneath him, a slightly dazed Eren struggled to unclip his belt, hanging upside-down by a single wire. For a long moment, the space inside Jean’s head was filled with white noise, his eyes fixed on the panicked ‘o’ of Marco’s mouth, gasping for air.

_Marco._

_Marco’s choking._

 

And then, beneath the numb buzz of his brain, a cold thought crept in:

 

_I changed the timeline._

_What if Marco dies here instead?_

Jean ran. He cleared the ditch and ran into the arena, ducking beneath Astrid as she dropped to the floor. He was distantly aware of someone yelling behind him, and the piercing shriek of Shadis’s whistle, but it was lost beneath the pulse of his heart beating somewhere in the vicinity of his throat. The only thing that even vaguely mattered was Marco, twenty feet in the air, legs kicking, lips turning a dark, ugly blue. He had to reach him. Jean took a running jump and shot, hooks embedding just short of Eren’s, gas tanks on maximum burst as he ascended, moving faster than he’d ever moved. Marco’s eyes met his for a split second, and he opened his mouth to shout – _stay calm, I’m almost there_.

 

And then his belt snapped.

 

He hadn’t had time to secure the rest of his straps. He was utterly without backup.

 

Time seemed to run slow as Jean tumbled backwards, watching his departing gear dangling just a few inches shy of Marco’s feet, and as the ground rushed up to meet him he resolved that the next time Marco advised him to do anything at all, he’d be damn sure to do it there and then.

 

Then he hit the ground, and everything was darkness.

 

*

 

“….bad, I think, there’s a little blood from this ear but otherwise it looks intact.”

 

“What’s his skull made out of, diamond?”

 

Jean’s limbs felt detached, like they were somewhere a long way away.

 

“I’ve never seen anyone hit the ground that hard.” Eren’s voice. Eren was okay. For some reason, Jean was relieved about that. “I think he bounced. Did he bounce?”

 

“Where the hell are the medics? Aren’t there supposed to be some on standby?” Reiner, sounding uncharacteristically fretful. Jean turned his head, seeking the source of the sound. His skull seemed filled with sand. He struggled to open his eyes but they weren’t cooperating, and he felt someone’s hands, warm and strong, clasping each side of his face.

 

“Try not to move.” Sasha’s voice, gentle as her hands.

 

The sand in his head seemed to clog his ears, fill the black space behind his eyes, filtering down into his mouth, and it wouldn’t be so bad but he didn’t know _how_ the sand had ended up there, and why his body seemed to be several miles away…

 

The last thing he remembered…what did he remember? Both feet on the ground. Sasha beside him. Looking up. Watching. But what? What had they been watching? Sasha had shouted something, and he’d felt his stomach drop like a rock. And…

 

Marco.

 

Marco’s face, eyes wide and wet, and the wire cutting into the delicate flesh of his throat.

 

“Muh.” Twitching his limbs, blood circulating down to his fingers at last. He laid his palms flat against the cold ground, pushed hard; his muscles burned in miserable protest as he tried and failed to pry himself up off the ground.

 

“Jean, stay still. You could be really hurt.”

 

“Wuh.” How hard could it be to form a full sentence? “Wuh. What about muh. Marco?”

 

There was a pause. His swollen eyelids remained stubbornly shut, but he could almost sense Sasha’s trepidation, feel it in the sudden tightness of her fingers against his jaw, and that was enough for him. His arms felt like wet noodles, his spine a column of sponge, but he fought, ignoring the heaviness of his head and the sharp pain rising like a spear jammed into his right leg. He’d managed to struggle onto his side before he felt someone else’s hands clutch his shoulders, huge fingers enveloping the still-scrawny circumference of his upper arms. They eased him onto his back again, pinning him down with little effort.

 

“Jean Kirschtein,” Sasha said, firm this time. “Either you stay still of your own accord, or I will have Reiner sit on you, and I don’t think I need to remind you what happened last time Reiner sat on someone. Okay? The choice is yours. Now be a good boy, and _settle the fuck down_.”

 

It wasn’t like he had a lot of choice in the matter. Whoever owned the giant pair of hands currently pressing him to the ground seemed to possess the strength of ten men.

 

Jean licked his dry lips and tasted blood.

 

“What about Marco?” he insisted.

 

“Eren managed to untangle him.” Bertholdt’s voice, coming from directly above him. Those were Bertholdt’s hands, then. No wonder they felt so warm. “I think he’s okay.”

 

“You _think_.”

 

“I’m as sure as I can be.” Bertholdt said quietly.

 

“Jean, nobody’s going to let anything bad happen to Marco, okay? I promise you that. But you’ve got to take it easy. You fell a long way.” There was something soothing about hearing Reiner and Bertholdt speak in tandem. Something inherently safe about the two of them, sat either side of him. And Sasha, absently stroking his cheek with her thumb, other hand combing through his hair, checking for obvious wounds. He wanted to get up, go and find Marco, but his head felt so heavy, and a terrible ache had struck up somewhere in among all that sand, and maybe it wasn’t so bad here, on the floor, surrounded by people he trusted to keep him safe.

 

He was dimly aware that his mouth was moving, and that words seemed to be emerging, though he wasn’t sure what he was saying.

 

It didn’t matter.

 

Unconsciousness came slowly this time, drifting over him like mist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That angst I promised? Yeah. 
> 
> No trainees were harmed in the writing of this chapter.
> 
> As always, a thousand thank-yous to the people reading this. I hope this chapter lived up to your expectations <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which stupid boys argue, then kiss and make up. (They don't kiss. But they should.)  
> And then things get really weird...

Jean awoke to the smell of clean sheets and iodine, and a dull thumping in his head like a poorly-muffled bass drum.

 

He opened his eyes and found everything too bright, too colourful; groaning, he slung his arm loosely over his face, wondering why everything - even his _hair_ \- seemed to ache. It was a little like the time Samuel and Mikhail stole those ceramic jugs of moonshine from the officer's quarters, and everyone drank far too much of it (even Marco, who'd fallen almost immediately asleep, face nuzzled against Jean, arms looped loosely around him, mumbling 'you're my best friend’ and ‘I love you' into Jean’s neck. All of which had been eminently agreeable, right up until Marco started to drool.

The next day, when Shadis found out, they had to do one hundred pushups each, hangovers be damned.)

 

"I want to die," Jean muttered.

 

"Good," Marco said. "Because I'm going to kill you myself."

 

He lifted his arm, allowing the barest sliver of light in; through watering eyes, he saw Marco's face in blurry duplicate, registered the sheer depth of his frown, which far exceeded anything Jean had ever seen before in terms of seriousness. His eyes were dark and grave, and as Jean's eyes trailed down, past the tight downward curve of his mouth, there was an ugly ring of red-purple bruising tracing the circumference of Marco's throat.

And then he remembered everything.

 

Jean threw his arm aside, stared at Marco in his entirety - bruised, fretful, but _alive_ , and right here at his bedside. No thanks to him, true, but if Marco was alive then the whys and wherefores weren't important.

"You're okay," he said, wonderingly. It came out as a dry croak.

 

"I'm okay," Marco confirmed. He sounded tense; his hands were tightly knotted in his lap, resting atop the book he'd been reading. "But if you ever do anything that stupid again, Jean, I...well, I don't know what I'm going to do, but you're not going to like it. I can guarantee that."

 

"How are you feeling, Jean?" Jean said, mimicking Marco's slight accent. "Would you like some water, Jean? You sure do look sore, Jean, can I plump your pillows for you?"

 

"Don't start. You're lucky I don't hit you with the bedpan." There wasn't a hint of humour in Marco's eyes. He was visibly upset, verging on the angry, clutching his book with tight fingers, shadows spread beneath his eyes. How long had he been sitting there, waiting for Jean to wake up?

Jean frowned. "What did I do wrong?"

"You fell fifteen feet and almost broke your stupid _neck_ , that's what you did. It's a miracle you aren't dead. Eren swears up and down that you bounced when you hit the ground. You're a reckless idiot and you scared me out of my skin and I am so _pissed off_ with you right now."

 

Jean struggled to sit up and found his bodily entirely uncooperative. The effort made his headache even worse, and he flopped uselessly back against the pillows, staring up at Marco with what he hoped was his most pitiful, wounded expression.

"I tried to _save_ you," Jean protested.

“Jean, I wouldn’t even have _been_ in that position if it hadn’t been for you.”

 

This time he sat bolt upright, powered by sheer indignation and wounded pride. His head spun unpleasantly, and his right hip burned deep in the socket. Despite his obvious annoyance, Marco still held out both hands to steady him; Jean, caught between wanting to brush him off and not wanting to topple out of bed, opted to evade him, shuffling up against the headboard for support. Just what did Marco mean by that? How could he sit here, by Jean’s sickbed, and blame _him_?

“That’s _bullshit_ ,” Jean said, through clenched teeth. “I’d never put you in danger. _Ever_.”

 

And then he actually thought about it, recalling the conversation they’d had not ten minutes before Marco’s brush with strangulation; the way he’d badgered Marco into beating Eren, the way he’d…well…emotional manipulation was a little _strong_ , but…

He looked up at Marco. At the raw marks around his throat, and the tangled mess of his hair, unbrushed, because despite his anger, despite his upset, he’d still opted to stay by Jean’s side until he awoke.

 

Oh.

Jean pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh.

 

If there was one thing he’d learned in spades from this excursion into the past, it was that he was utterly undeserving of Marco Bodt’s friendship.

 

“Shit.” He drew his palms down his cheeks. “I’m sorry, Marco, you’re right, I…” 

“No, no,” Marco waved a frantic hand, cutting his apology short. “I’m the one who should be sorry, Jean, I shouldn’t have said what I…” 

 

“…no, listen, I…” 

 

“…it’s fine, Jean, really, it’s my fault, I should have just said no…” 

 

“…listen, Marco…” 

 

“…honestly, I feel terrible for even bringing it up…” 

 

“Marco, will you shut up for just one second and _let me apologise_?

 

Marco stopped mid-sentence, mouth wide, face flushed, utterly caught up in his race to apologise first. 

 

“Listen,” Jean said, softer now. “Marco. You were right. I thought I knew what was best for you, and I pushed you into it. It was my fault. And…I suppose I deserve this. You know. For being such a dick.” 

 

He looked horrified. “Don’t say that,” he said, in a small voice. His capacity for kindness was alarming, Jean thought; nobody should be that forgiving, least of all to someone as selfish and thick-headed as himself. 

 

“Relax. I got a knock to the head. It’s not like I…” he caught himself before he could say ‘lost a leg’. “It’s not like I’ll never walk again,” he finished. 

 

“Aside from the bruises, and the concussion, you also dislocated your hip,” Marco said, indicating Jean’s right leg with a nod. “When you fell. It took three people to get it back in. You bit one of the nurses when he tried to hold you down.” 

“I did _what?_ ” 

“You didn’t actually do any damage. They’d given you such a heavy dose of painkilling medication that I don’t think you really knew where you were.” He was looking a little less gloomy now, apparently buoyed by Jean’s sudden vigour (and, no doubt, his apology – it was a rare thing that Jean should be the first to apologise.) “You were concussed already. It stands to reason that you’d act a little oddly.” 

Jean felt a strange weight in his chest. “Oddly how?” 

 

“Well. Biting a nurse isn’t exactly ordinary behaviour.” 

 

“Did I do anything _else_?” 

 

Marco chewed his lip thoughtfully. “Well, you said some strange things,” he said. “Sasha told me that when they stretchered you away, you grabbed her arm and wouldn’t let go until she swore that she’d keep Annie away from me.” 

Jean swallowed hard. “Oh.” 

 

“You were muttering a lot. About how you’d messed it up and you’d have to start over. It was sort of funny, actually…” Marco leaned over, placed his book on the floor (Jean couldn’t read the title – it seemed to be in some other language. Or perhaps that was the concussion too.) When he came back up there was the ghost of a smile about his mouth, and Jean liked that a lot better. “I was standing right there-“ pointing to the foot of the bed, where Jean’s chart hung, “-and you looked up at me with your eyes half-closed and you said ‘Marco, did you die?’ And…I’m sorry, I feel terrible about this, but I was just so _angry_ with you, so I said yes, I was dead. And you made this sound…” he was actually smiling now, really smiling, eyes creased at the corners, looking like he was trying very hard not to laugh. “I wish you could’ve heard it, Jean, you sounded so _disappointed_. And then you said ‘oh, not again’, and fell asleep.” 

If that was the worst of it, then in Jean’s estimation, he’d probably got away lightly. He sent a silent thanks up to whatever gods might be listening for the catch-all excuse that was concussion.

 

“Well,” Jean said, after a moment. “I’m glad you find my misfortune so hilarious.” 

“No, no, it’s not like that. Well, it sort of is. But I’m not used to seeing you so helpless. You always seem like you know exactly what you’re doing.”

_If only that were remotely true_ , Jean thought. 

 

“What about you?” he said. “You seem relatively healthy for someone who almost got strangled.” 

Marco’s smile faltered a little. “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember a lot of it,” he said, fiddling nervously with his cuffs. “Between Eren kicking me in the groin and waking up on the ground…it’s all a little blurry. I remember you, though. That’s actually the last thing I remember before waking up. You, falling backwards, disappearing.” Marco leaned forward suddenly, urgently, placing his palms flat on the edge of the bed. “Can I ask you something?”

 

“Uh…” there was an intensity in Marco’s gaze that made Jean acutely uncomfortable, like he suspected something awful and was praying inside that Jean would prove him wrong. And he was seized with the creeping certainty that Marco would ask about Annie. 

That was a question he had no idea how to answer. 

 

“Go crazy,” Jean said, and hoped he sounded at least vaguely offhand. 

“Do you think I can’t do this? Make the Military Police, I mean.” 

 

“What?” He wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or hideously guilty; he’d been the one to plant that particular seed of doubt. Jean Kirschtein, crown prince of idiots. He reached out and grabbed Marco’s wrist, circling it with his fingers. God, he was warm. “Marco, no, I don’t think that at all. I didn’t mean it like that. I was just…there’s no way I can come out of this looking like a decent human being, is there?”

 

“Just pushing my buttons,” Marco offered. 

“Yes.” Oh, that was guilt alright, consuming any lingering sense of relief; his head seemed to thump twice as hard now, and he reached up with his free hand, felt along the freshly-shaved outline of his skull for the source. Somewhere just behind his ear was a tidy line of stitches, pulling the scalp tight. 

 

“Don’t mess around with that.” Marco plucked Jean’s hand away, pulled it gently down beside his other hand. “Jean, don’t worry about me, okay? I know what I’m capable of. And I also know what my weaknesses are. I’m not fast, or agile, and I’m not particularly daring. But when it comes to the things I _am_ good at…I’m not under any illusions. I know I’m an asset in my own way. And I know your heart’s in the right place…” he gave Jean’s hand a reassuring squeeze “…but you don’t have to make a project out of me, okay? If I’m going to make the Military Police, I want it to be because Shadis sees something in me that nobody else has. Not because I’m a mediocre version of you.”

 

“You are _not…_ ” 

“I am. And I’m fine with that. You amaze me, Jean.” Earnest, now, knees pressed against the side of the bed, staring straight up into Jean’s face without a hint of hesitation. “I mean, you scare me half to death, but the things you can _do_ up there...it’s like you’ve been training your entire life. Like you were _born_ for this.”

 

Jean tried to smile, but it felt more like a grimace, lips pulled tightly back over his teeth. Marco hadn’t the faintest idea what a huge fraud he was, and yet he knew he could sit here and listen to Marco praise him forever. Just…bask in it. 

Still. Something was bothering him. 

 

“Could you fight a Titan?” Jean said. “If you had to?” 

Marco raised a surprised eyebrow. “Assuming we both make Military Police, we’ll never have to worry about that,” he said. “We’ll be safe behind Wall Sina. Protecting the King. Fighting Titans won’t be our concern.” 

 

“What happened in Shiganshina could happen again.” Marco’s hand was still loosely entwined in his. Surely, they’d surpassed the threshold of awkwardness by now. He found himself hoping Marco hadn’t noticed. 

“Is that why you’ve been pushing me? You’re paranoid Titans are going to break through Wall Rose?” He looked as if a puzzle piece had slid into place; like he’d come a step closer to unravelling the obtuse mystery that was Jean Kirschtein. “It’s never going to happen, Jean. That huge Titan Eren was talking about...if it’s as big as they say, it could have crushed Wall Rose to pieces by now. And it hasn’t. Whatever happened in Shiganshina…that Titan is gone, Jean. It’s not coming back.” 

 

The blind idiot optimism in his smile was like a blow to the gut. Jean pulled his hands away and sank back in his bed, resisting the urge to wrap his hands around Marco’s shoulders and shake him violently. It was unfair of him; he’d thought the same thing, back in his ‘when’, before Trost happened and all of his carefully held illusions of safety and a long, carefree life pretending to serve the king were shattered forever. 

Better that Marco should be let down gently than have his dreams crushed in the mouth of a Titan. 

“Marco…” Jean began. 

 

“Jean! You’re awake!”

Jean whipped his head around a little too quickly; Sasha was upon him by the time his vision cleared, trailing a sheepish-looking Armin in her wake. She pressed a gentle kiss to Jean’s forehead, giving his stitches a cursory inspection as she drew back. Armin perched delicately on the end of the bed, smiling politely. 

 

 

“Hey Sasha.” The bed seemed to bow under the sudden addition of two extra bodies. How could two tiny people be so heavy?

“You are a very difficult patient.” Sasha wagged a scolding finger. “Hey, Marco,” she said, in a gentler voice, and her smile was sweeter for him. Marco had that effect on people. “Has he been giving you trouble?”

 

“No trouble,” Marco said, amiable. 

 

“I heard he bit Matteo,” Armin said. 

 

"I am in the room, you know," Jean grumbled.

 

“Well, apart from that.” Marco shot Jean a reassuring smile, and he remembered, months ago, the warmth of Marco’s body lingering on his skin, and the whispered proclamation: _you’re my favourite idiot._ “Don’t worry. He’s been a model patient otherwise.” 

 

“When's he coming back?” Sasha asked.

“Well," Marco said, "he’s got to stay in for a few days so they can keep an eye on his head injury. And he’s not going to be running cross-country for at least a few weeks, depending on how merciful Shadis is feeling. So...I'm not sure yet." He flashed Armin a smile. "It's good of you to come and check in on him, though." 

 

"Actually, I came to see how _you_ were," Armin said, plainly embarrassed. "But uh. I'm glad you're okay too, Jean. I'm sure there's some kind of medal awarded for incredible feats of self-effacing stupidity. I don't doubt you're on the shortlist." Armin had never really been shy around Jean; having seen him at his worst on several occasions, he'd clearly decided there was nothing about Jean that scared him unduly. Even back in Jean's own time, he'd always felt a kind of rappor with Armin; the boy was as pragmatic as they came, though prone to losing himself in a stupor of self-reproach - something Jean knew a thing or two about. 

 

Jean settled back in his bed, letting the pillow take the weight of his increasingly sore head. "Is it true that I bounced?" 

 

"Oh yeah," Sasha nodded, with terrifying enthusiasm. "You really did." 

Behind her, Armin shook his head: _ignore her, she's being an idiot._ "So, Marco, when are you coming back?" 

 

"Oh, I'm good to leave any time," Marco said, offhand. "No lasting damage. I got away lightly." Which meant he'd been sitting here for untold hours, silently stewing in his own anger while he waited, and he hadn't even had to. He'd done it out of choice. _God_ , Jean thought, looking up at him in wonderment. _I really don't deserve you_. 

 

"I almost forgot!" Sasha dove into the bag at her feet and pulled out a pillowcase; judging by the lumpen exterior, it was filled with bread. "I came to deliver your prize. Connie ruled that all bets were still good, and since Marco won fairly - and since nobody else bet on him - all of this is yours." The bread-stuffed pillowcase landed with a gentle thump on Jean's lap, and he looked at it for a moment, uncomprehending; since when had the prize been _bread_? 

"Wasn't it apples?" Jean asked. 

"What?" 

"Apples." Jean gestured to the pillowcase on his lap. "Franz said the prize was a bag of apples. You made Bertholdt steal them. Did they go bad? It's a shame. I was kind of looking forward to making Marco eat them." 

 

Sasha smiled, quizzical. "Wow, you really did hit your head hard. Jean, Franz was kicked out of the betting ring weeks ago. We caught him rigging the hand-to-hand scores. Where would we get apples from, anyway? 

 

"Actually." There was a strange serenity about Armin's face, a counter to Marco's obvious bemusement. "There's an orchard behind the firing range. I had thought about sending Bertholdt in to steal some, but it seemed too risky. The orchard owner is rumoured to have a shotgun." His eyes seemed suddenly brighter, more alert, and something about his manner made Jean profoundly uncomfortable; it was bad enough to discover that Armin was a secret fruit-smuggler in the making, but Jean had never seen Armin look like that before. Like he'd bored deep into Jean's skull and extracted something strange from the darkest depths. 

 

"Well, whatever. Maybe there'll be apples next time." Sasha seemed untroubled by this strange coincidence. "Although now we all know about your secret weapon here, Jean, don't think you'll get the whole prize to yourself next time." 

"I wouldn't bet on me in future, if I were you," Marco said. 

 

Sasha's reply seemed to go straight over Jean's head, as did the idle chatter that followed. The thump of his brain seemed to have trebled in intensity, setting up a home in the dry sockets of his eyes; the vibration seemed to rattle even his teeth. Apples. Why had he thought that? Had that happened before? He cast his mind back as best he could, remembering pillowcases of bread and entire slabs of blackberry pie, extra bedding and scarves stolen from the storeroom - almost always won by other people, Jean had never been blessed with luck - but never apples. And although his brain was aching, he knew it wasn't his memory at fault. 

Through the haze of chatter, he saw Armin, watching him carefully from the corner of his eye.

Come to think of it, Franz had been kicked out of the betting ring in his time too. Not for vote rigging - that had been Mylius, angel-faced and utterly unsuspicious, and he might have gotten away with it had it not been for Connie's sharp eyes. Franz had been caught taking bread from the prize stash and sharing it with Hannah. He'd been removed from proceedings long before manoeuvre gear training ever got to the arena stage. 

So where had the apples come from? 

 

A familiar nausea had begun to burn in the pit of his stomach, and he must have looked as bad as he felt, because Sasha placed a gentle hand on his shin and said "are you feeling okay?" 

 

"Sasha, he must be tired. He needs rest." Armin's tone was gentle, and Jean wondered if he'd been imagining everything - Armin's eyes on him, sharp and knowing. Perhaps he _was_ tired. Perhaps it was the concussion, having shaken parts of his brain a little loose. "Let's be getting back now. We'll see you later, will we Marco?" 

 

He nodded. "See you soon." 

 

Armin grabbed Sasha’s arm and all but dragged her to the door. She managed a polite, confused wave on the way out, peering at Jean as she went, utterly bemused.

 

“What was that about?” asked Marco. 

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Jean replied, a little pitifully. Almost immediately, a steel kidney dish appeared beneath him, held aloft in Marco’s far-too-eager hands. He gave Marco a sour look. “Could you at least look away?”

Marco indulged him a small smile. “Jean, you were covered in puke the day we met. I’m a little beyond being bothered by that.”

“Just…give me a moment, please? I’ll be fine. It’s just my brain’s a little loose.” He closed his eyes, groped blindly for the kidney dish; his fingers fumbled over Marco’s and held there, double-clutching the dish. “I’m sure it was apples…”

 

“Is that what this is about?” Marco’s fingers extricated themselves from under Jean’s, momentarily absent before reappearing, warm and gentle in the bruised space around his stitches. His skin rasped against the fresh-shaved stubble. “You probably just overheard Armin talking about it, that’s all. I’m kind of glad, actually. I wasn’t looking forward to being force-fed mouldy fruit.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right.” Jean knew he hadn’t heard Armin talking about it. He hadn’t even known Armin was _in_ on the betting. His head was swimming dangerously now, drifting between ‘whens’, trying desperately to pinpoint the source of that single piece of knowledge. And it _hurt_ , physically. “Marco. I think I need to sleep. Things aren’t making sense right now.”

 

He stroked absently at the side of Jean’s skull, tracing the shaven margins with his fingers, and Jean found himself leaning in, savouring the contact. “The doctor said you’d probably be a little confused. It’s why they’re keeping you in. Do you, uh…do you want me to stay with you?”

What Jean wanted, more than anything, was for Marco to crawl in beside him, drape an arm around him and stay there until he fell asleep. For his presence, and his warmth, and the clean, familiar scent of him to drive away all the complicated thoughts swimming around his skull. No panic. No confusion. Only Marco. And the intensity of it _scared_ him, like he wasn’t certain he’d be able to function without Marco beside him. Like he didn’t _want_ to function without him.

 

“I think you should go back to the dorms,” Jean said, swallowing down nausea. “They’re probably worried about you.”

He couldn’t see it, but he could almost feel Marco’s hurt, radiating from him like a flush of embarrassment. His fingers abruptly disappeared, and Jean fought the urge to reach out, pull his hand back. “Okay,” Marco said. “I’ll come by tomorrow. Is…is that okay?”

 

His stomach seemed to crawl up into his throat.

_Please, Marco. Please, just go._

“Yeah. That would be good.”

 

There was a rustling sound as Marco got to his feet.

“See you tomorrow then.” Hesitant. It wasn’t as if Jean was _trying_ to make him feel bad, but there was no other way around it. He had to sleep. Shut down entirely and wake up with a clearer mind. Because something wasn’t making sense. And maybe it _was_ just a bag of stupid apples, but Armin…

_No. Not thinking about this anymore._

 

“Bye, Marco.”

Only when Marco’s footsteps had grown distant, and the sound of the door creaking shut had faded did Jean allow himself to lean forward, lift the kidney dish to his chin and retch, long and painfully, until he felt empty of absolutely everything.

And then he lay back, breathing hard, and sank into a deep, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone reading this. May your holiday season be a happy and peaceful one! As always, any thanks I give you all will be woefully inadequate <3
> 
> (also, why do all my chapters end in unconsciousness? Answers on a postcard.)
> 
> EDIT 2/1/13: This fic will be on a VERY SHORT (i.e 2 weeks or so) hiatus for reasons outlined here:   
> http://revolvermonkcelot.tumblr.com/post/71959042342
> 
> Don't worry, I am absolutely not abandoning this fic! If you're reading and waiting for an update, you have all my thanks. Any questions, feel free to come and message me.
> 
> Happy New Year!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jean realises there's still much to learn about Marco, and feelings are difficult things to reconcile.
> 
> (And also, Sasha and Connie are excellent personal trainers.)

 

_Þú reyndir allt_  
Já, þúsundfalt  
Upplifðir nóg  
Komin með nóg  
En það varst þú sem allt  
Lést í hjarta mér  
Og það varst þú sem andann aftur  
Kveiktir inní mér

_*_

_You tried everything_  
Yes, a thousand times  
Experienced enough  
Been through enough  
But you it was who let everything  
Into my heart  
And it was you who once again  
Awoke my spirit

 

 

"Thirty-two..."

The muscles in his arms seemed stretched almost fit to snap, a tight band of fire running across the slope of his upper back. He pushed, palms flat on the floor, lifting himself up.

"Thirty-three..."

And down again, forehead beaded with sweat, arms trembling now as he pushed one final time, teeth clenched, trying to ignore the sick throb of his hip as he rose up, legs straight, arms braced...

"Thirty-four..."

...and back down to the ground, spent and panting, face pressed against the mercifully cool grass. A chorus of disappointed groans echoed out around him as he spread his arms out to the side, palms outstretched and waving his surrender: _please, no more_.

"Only thirty-four?" Sasha's voice, from behind him. "Jean, that sucks. You can do better than that."

The crippling pressure eased considerably as Connie hopped off his back, stretching his legs; his face was creased into a deep frown. "C'mon, man, I'm not that heavy."

"Your ass is bony,” Jean muttered. “It hurts my shoulders."

"You sure do know a lot about Connie's ass," Sasha said, chirpy, mimicking Connie's earlier half-lotus position on the grass. "But Jean, that's a pretty poor show. I can do fifty pushups with Connie on my back, easy."

Jean glared up at them, arms spreadeagled and aching, flexing his numb fingers. "I don't think I want to know how you figured out you could do that," he said, raising an eyebrow.

They both flushed simultaneously, looking anywhere but each other; there was a certain cruel satisfaction in making these assholes feel awkward. It was petty on Jean's part - between the two of them and Marco, his rehabilitation was coming along a lot quicker than it otherwise would have. Shadis had expressed his expectation that Jean should be fit to recommence training in the next week, and Jean - bored out of his skull studying theory and performing the same, repetitive stretches every single day - was eager to get back out there.

He'd been a spectator at the training sessions - 'capture the flag' was still ongoing, although in the wake of Marco's injury, recklessness and lack of observation were now punishable by thirty laps or latrine duty, depending on Shadis's frame of mind. It seemed to Jean that the better trainees were progressing alarmingly fast without him; grounded for three weeks, he felt static, like his skills were slowly rusting.

The consequences of fucking with the timeline were becoming horribly evident now, and Jean had thought long and hard about it, confined to a hospital bed for three days with a nurse poking painfully at his stitches, and a doctor yanking his injured leg at improbable angles. Minor changes were one thing: he'd grown used to the nausea, the disorienting sense of wrongness, and that was something he could ignore, given thirty seconds of breathing and focusing. But things hadn't gone really wrong until he'd tried to influence Marco. Until he'd tried to force him to change the path predetermined: end up a mid-tier graduate, a perpetual play-it-safer, never taking risks or pushing himself to beat the others.

The universe, it seemed, wanted its death-offering.

As if summoned by sheer thought, Marco came strolling across the field towards them, already harnessed up and ready for maneuver gear training. "Did they kill you already?" he asked, smiling slightly at Jean sprawled bonelessly on the grass.

"The village idiots make decent drill instructors," Jean said, when the two of them were out of earshot. Easily distracted, they'd started playing a game which seemed to consist of chasing one another at full pelt across the field until one tackled the other violently to the ground, laughing raucously in the face of potential injury. Marco sat on the grass beside him, plucking long strands between his fingers. "I don't know what the hell Connie eats, but he's damn heavy for a little guy. It's like having a rock strapped to your back."

"Potatoes'll do that to you," Marco said. The ring of bruising around his neck had faded almost completely now, leaving only a slight yellowish cast across the bones of his throat. Jean sat up, trying to ignore the way his sweat-soaked shirt clung uncomfortably. "How's your studying coming along?"

"It's not." Tugging grass out in handfuls, turning the ground bald in patches. "I _know_ all this stuff, Marco. And I don't really care about the history of the walls or Titan anatomy or the power structure of the goddamn Military Police."

"You want to get back out there, don't you?"

"Yeah." He looked up at Marco, who was pretending not to be curious because Marco was basically perfect in every way, and would certainly never dream of prying into what he considered Jean's personal business. Jean wished he would. He wished Marco would sit him down and ask him what the hell was going on. Why his moods were so unstable, and why he insisted on Marco training as hard as he could. Why he'd demanded Annie be kept away from Marco, and why he lay awake some nights, staring fixedly at the ceiling until Marco scooted over, warm and muzzy with sleep, and draped a loose arm across Jean's chest.

He wished Marco would ask him a lot of things.

Jean reached out a hand, traced the ghost of the bruise across Marco's throat with his index finger. Marco's eyes widened a little, and he drew away sharply, drawing in a hiss between his teeth. "Still sore?" Jean asked.

"Only when someone pokes it," Marco said.

"I was _gentle_ ," Jean insisted, and Marco rewarded him with one of those wry little half-smiles he seemed to use only for Jean. They sat on the grass for a while, watching Connie and Sasha chase each other like excitable puppies, and Jean wished it could always be like this. That Marco’s vision of the future would come true this time: no Colossal Titan to fuck everything up. No Battle of Trost. No blood spilled, no hearts broken. He and Marco would graduate, join the Military Police, grow old and soft around the middle, and nobody would die.

 

He watched Marco watching the idiots play. The sun felt good on the back of his neck, drying the sweat from his skin. The throb of his injured hip seemed faint, and very far away.

 

For the first time since the accident, his thoughts didn’t return to that damn bag of apples.

 

*

 

The next day he was sitting alone in the dorms, cross-legged on his bedroll with a textbook open on his lap. It was a huge, dusty tome, unearthed from the labyrinthine depths of the officer’s library, and it seemed to have been written around about the time the walls were built judging by the dry, archaic language. He’d been reading the same passage over and over for the past five minutes, running his finger beneath the text for clarity, and it still made no sense at all.

 

He looked over at the open door, at the blue sky and pale wisps of cloud.

 

Jean felt pretty damn rehabilitated. He could run laps, and do pushups, and jumping-jacks and fulfill all of Shadis’s arbitrary criteria for rehabilitation. But still, the instructor – glaring at Jean with those perpetually wide-open eyes – had determined that it was ‘too soon’. That he should do some good, old-fashioned book learning. ‘Supplement his education’, Shadis had said, leaving him in the care of some nameless Garrison lackey with a bad bowl-cut and a nose like a hatchet. Said lackey was napping in the sun outside, no doubt thanking his lucky stars for this piss-poor excuse of a responsibility.

 

He was just about ready to take the book outside and drop it on bowl-cut’s slack-mouthed face when a shadow appeared in the doorway.

 

“I brought you some lunch,” Marco said, holding a ceramic bowl aloft in both hands. “Reiner’s on kitchen duty today, so it’s probably edible.”

 

Jean raised an eyebrow. “Should you even be here?”

 

“What, not even a thank-you?” Marco placed the bowl on the edge of the upper bunk, shucked off his boots and clambered up the ladder to join him. “They’re doing target practice down at the firing range. Actually, it was Shadis’s idea that I come bring you some lunch. And I thought maybe I could help you study.”

 

“Please, no.” Jean grabbed the bowl, lifted it to his face so he could sniff at the contents. It was some kind of roasted root vegetable concoction, seasoned the way only Reiner seemed to manage – the boy could work culinary magic with just about any ingredients. He picked up the spoon and started shovelling the food into his mouth, chewing without grace or restraint. When he caught Marco smirking in the corner of his eye, he gulped down the mouthful and said “what? I’m starving.”

 

“You eat like you might never see food again,” Marco remarked, and slid the book from Jean’s lap to his. He squinted at the text, read a few passages as Jean scraped the last of the food into his open mouth. “Wow,” he said, after a short while. “This is…really uninteresting.”

 

“I think this is some kind of punishment,” Jean said. He placed the bowl over on Connie’s bedroll – opposite Marco’s, now that Mariusz had left for the landfills. “It’s not enough for him that I almost knocked my brains out. He wants to finish the job.”

 

Marco shut the book with a thump. A thin cloud of dust billowed up from the closed pages. “We can still study,” he said, and Jean was mildly alarmed by the sheer enthusiasm of that announcement. “Wait there.” Marco shimmied down the ladder, padding across the floor with his feet still bare. At the far end was a row of shelves, each belonging to an occupant: they’d all been neatly labelled in Armin’s tidy copperplate handwriting. Marco’s was the highest shelf to the right, and his personal effects were stowed away in a neat, precise manner.

 

Jean watched as he pulled a leather-bound book from the top shelf. The cover was dark oxblood, cracked in places, probably as old as his textbook. Jean recognised it as the book that had almost caused Marco to come to blows with Franz back in his when. It was also the book he'd been reading at Jean's bedside back in the infirmary. Suddenly, he was intrigued. Marco had never shown him the book, or told him what it was, or even mentioned it all except for that one altercation.

 

"This is much more interesting," Marco said, passing him the book. Jean was almost hesitant to take it, but he did, running his fingers over the rough leather, the embossed gold lettering. He could see, tucked between the pages, the edge of Marco's family portrait, and he was tempted to flip straight to it. He didn't know much about Marco's family. Did they all look like him? Strong built, dark hair, olive skin peppered with dark freckles?

 

He opened the book to the third page. It smelled the way all old books did: of damp, decaying paper and mould. Inside, the text was handwritten, painstakingly tidy uppercase printed by steady hands. He read

 

"Marco," he said, frowning. "This is all gibberish."

 

"It's in another language, idiot." He eased himself up behind Jean, leaning over his shoulder as he read. He felt the rumble of Marco’s chest as he read aloud, picking out a passage at random with his finger. " _E quandu vogghiu non vuliri vogghiu,_ " Marco read; his mouth fit easily around the strange syllables, voice low as he spoke, and Jean listened, quiet, enthralled. It was Marco's voice, familiar, but his words were alien. _"E quandu cercu fùiri m'impressu. Sù appuntu comu la candila all'ogghiu. Tu mi consumi et iu ti vegnu appressu..._ "

Marco broke off mid-paragraph, straightening up, so that he was no longer resting on Jean's shoulder, no longer pressed comfortably against the curve of his spine. He looked almost embarrassed; shy, even, eyes cast down at the handwritten passage, as if he wasn't sure how Jean would react.

Jean thought he could listen to Marco speak like that forever.

"Read some more," Jean demanded, shoving the book at him, and the other boy's mouth curled up into a tiny smile as he took it in both hands, resting it on his lap. Marco shut the book gently, palms flat on the cover. It seemed teasing of him, Jean thought, to show him so little.

"This is the language my mother spoke," Marco said. "Many families in Jinae speak it. It's sort of the unofficial dialect there. My sister and I were raised with two languages. We were a little surprised when we found out most children only spoke one."

"Two languages." Jean repeated. He hadn't known much about Marco's family, back in his when. Marco had always been tight-lipped on the subject, listening with friendly enthusiasm as others spoke of their parents and siblings but never joining in, and only rarely mentioning them to Jean. It had never struck him as odd, back then: Marco was a listener by nature.

"I thought maybe you were bilingual," Marco said. "What with your name and all."

Jean shrugged. "My parents sometimes argued in some other language," he said, picking at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt. He thought briefly back: he and his brothers, ears pressed against the wall, wondering which words were the swearwords. "Did your parents give you that book?"

When he looked up, he realised Marco wasn't looking at him anymore. His eyes were cast low, down at the floor, like he'd seen something especially interesting down there. He gripped the book tightly as if it might open up and fly away.

 _The language my mother spoke_.

Spoke. Past tense.

Oh.

"Shit, Marco, I had no idea..." That was the truth, at least. And even with Marco, sad-eyed and a little desolate beside him, he couldn't help but feel a small twinge of hurt that the Marco in his time had never felt able to share this with him. Apparently, he’d been a bigger asshole back then than he’d realised.

"It's okay," Marco said. "It was a long time ago."

"You don’t always have to be so brave about everything," Jean said. He extended an arm, wrapping it around Marco's shoulders and tugged gently, so that they could sit side by side. In the upheaval, the book spilled over onto Jean's lap, and he made to move it but stopped short, hand wavering just above, unwilling to lay fingers on something so important and precious. Suddenly, Marco's anger and upset at Franz made perfect sense. They sat like that for a moment, quiet, Jean's arm stiff and awkward around Marco's shoulders; he felt the sudden hitch of Marco’s chest, and for an awful moment he was certain he’d made him cry. He slipped his index finger beneath Marco’s chin, gently lifted his face and-

-the asshole was _laughing_.

“Would you mind telling me what’s so fucking funny?” Jean said, and as he made to tug his arm away Marco wrapped a hand around his wrist, pulling him in for a brief, a-little-too-close-to-be-friendly hug; his face was squashed momentarily against Marco’s, cheek to cheek. The scent of sun-warmed skin and the sweat in his hair and the faint burn of cordite seemed terribly familiar, evoking something Jean couldn’t quite place. Like a memory on the very periphery, faded almost to invisibility but there, just out of reach.

Like the apples.

 _Of all the times to remember that…_ Jean thought.

“ _This_ is how you hug someone," Marco said. He released his grip, pulling gently away and his smile froze when he saw Jean's face. "I...I'm sorry," he said, stammering a little. "Was that too much? Because..."

"No, no..." Jean waved a hand. He'd grown better at controlling it, the unpleasant effects of time-dysphoria on his brain and body, but nausea tightened his gullet all the same. "It's just a hug, Marco, I'm not exactly _averse_." Quite the opposite, it seemed, because with the scent of skin and sweat and gunpowder had rose a powerful urge to wrap both arms around Marco and pull him close, press his face against his hair. _This is how you hug someone_ , he thought, and fought back the smirk which threatened at his lips. "It's just a headache. From reading Shadis's shitty old book."

Marco looked contemplative for a moment. He seemed about to speak when there was a hesitant knock at the door. They both turned sharply, like they'd been caught doing something they shouldn't.

Annie stood in the doorway.

"Instructor told me I'd find you here," she said. She was nursing the tail-end of a bloody nose, her sleeves stained a rusty red. "He wants you back in time for close-quarters combat. Says you can't afford to skip it." Her eyes met Jean's for a second, pale, blank, giving nothing away. She looked utterly uninterested. But then, Jean thought, she always had. "I'm heading towards the infirmary. You might as well come with."

"Sure." Marco clambered down the ladder, tugged his boots back on; he stood one-legged like a giant stork as he secured the straps. He looked up, offered Jean a small wave as he joined Annie at the door. "See you later, Jean."

Jean's brain was almost screaming at him to prevent this, to get Marco away from Annie, but he did not protest. "Later, Marco," he said. And then: "Bye, Annie."

She seemed marginally appeased by this, and as they headed out across the yard, he realised he'd been clenching his fists. This was ridiculous. Even if Annie _had_ been responsible for what happened to Marco - and he was still far from certain on that count - she wasn't exactly going to assassinate him in the middle of the yard, where anyone with half a brain would know who'd done it. Right now, she was one of them. Strange, taciturn, perhaps a little vicious, but one of them.

The book was still on his lap.

Jean stared at it for a moment, as if expecting it to catch fire or perhaps explode. Was this some kind of a test? Was Marco waiting just outside, ready to catch him in the act of slipping the portrait out from between the pages?

He never had been good at resisting curiosity, unless it came with danger on the side, and here the danger of upsetting Marco loomed, unpleasant a possibility as any Titan. Jean tucked the book under his arm, jumping the short distance to the floor, and replaced it with great care on Marco's shelf. He'd always thought that Marco had trusted him, back in his time. But he was beginning to wonder now whether he'd been entirely wrong.

It had taken Jean four years of his life to win Marco's full trust, and he didn't intend to fuck it up now.

*

_They're sitting on the bough of a tall tree, he and Marco; it's a sunny day, early summer, and there's a gentle breeze rustling the leaves all around them. They're just outside Trost. Jean doesn't know how they got there, but the sound of Shadis's voice is gloriously absent, and they're enjoying the afternoon sun; the warmth seeps under their skin, into their bones, and it feels good._

_Marco's eating an apple. The juice runs down his fingers, glistens on his lips as he chews, thoughtful, gazing into the distance like there's something he's forgotten. Jean leans up against the trunk, watching Marco eat. There's something weirdly compelling about it. Something in the motion of his mouth, the way the juice runs down his chin. His tongue darts out to lick his lips._

_"Let me get that for you," Jean says. He scrambles up onto his knees, balance perfect, and grabs Marco's face in both hands; Marco lets out a little squeak of surprise as Jean licks the juice clean, his tongue working slowly up Marco's chin to his lips. When he gets there - slow, savouring the sweetness, the sensation of warm skin under his tongue - he grasps Marco's lower lip gently between his teeth and sucks, watching with undisguised glee as Marco squirms._

_The apple falls from Marco's hand. It explodes into pulp as it hits the groud below._

_Jean releases Marco's face, delighting in the sudden flush of his cheeks, the pink moat of teethmarks indented in his lower lip._

_"You're gross," Marco says, scrubbing at his chin, but he's smiling, and somehow this seems normal, like it's not the first time their lips have met. Like other things have passed between them, though Jean can't remember them right now._

_"I was helping," Jean insists. And he leans back against the trunk, pulling Marco with him; he doesn't resist, back pressed against Jean's chest, long legs stretched out before him. Jean loops his arms loosely around Marco's chest. They sit like that for a while, basking in the sun together like cats; Jean's cheek is pillowed against Marco's hair, and he feels himself starting to doze, listening to the comforting rhythm of Marco's heartbeat, and the slow rush of air filling his lungs. Marco's hair tickles Jean's face, still a little damp with sweat from rifle training earlier that day, under the midday sun. He smells of warm skin, and sunshine, and faintly, of gunpowder. He'll always associate this with Marco: clever with a gun, aim perfect, hands steady. Made for the Military Police. They'll go together, the pair of them. They'll fall in love and they’ll grow old, if time wills it; it seems ridiculous to Jean that they should ever be apart._

_It seems unthinkable that either of them could die._

_There’s a sudden clatter of branches as someone throws something up at the tree, but Jean’s too sleepy to detach himself from Marco. And it’s not as if their closeness is a secret now. He cracks open an eye, peering over the edge; a corona of blonde hair appears, followed by wide, frightened blue eyes. Armin. He’s breathing hard, as if he’s been running._

_“I’ve been calling you,” Armin says, sounding a little peevish._

_“I was asleep,” Jean says pointedly; it’s not often they get an afternoon to themselves._

_Marco stirs at the sound of his voice, blinking sleepily. “What’s wrong, Armin?”_

_“You have to come quick.”_

_(There’s a dull pain somewhere in the vicinity of Jean’s heart, like he knows what’s about to happen. He wants to send Armin away, tell him they’re busy. It’s their afternoon off. They have sleep to catch up on, and stupid conversations to conduct, and kisses to exchange.)_

_“Why?” Marco asks. He sits upright, leaning over to see Armin, and Jean wants to pull him back, tell him to ignore him and stay here, where it’s warm, and bad things never happen. He’s about to give Armin a speech to that effect when he notices what Armin has in his hand._

_A red apple. Shiny. The pulp of Marco’s half-eaten apple is gone, spirited away. Jean knows with awful, creeping certainty that what Armin is holding is the same apple._

_“Armin,” Marco says. “What’s wrong?”_

_Armin’s eyes meet Jean’s, and he swears he knows exactly what Armin’s about to say. He can see the words forming on his lips, ready to emerge._

_But he’s wrong._

_“Jean,” Armin says, soft. “You’re dreaming. Wake up.”_

*

Jean woke with a start, Armin’s voice a fading echo in his ears.

“Bad dream?”

He lay back down, turning to face Marco. His skin felt hot, and damp with sweat. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?” Marco’s eyes were half-lidded, suggesting Jean had woken him. He looked warm, comfortable, and Jean was halfway inclined to crawl in next to him; Marco wouldn’t have minded. He’d done it before, back when it was colder.

“Always know. When I’ve had a nightmare, or can’t sleep.” The blankets suddenly felt stifling; he kicked them off, awaiting Connie’s inevitable complaint about his wandering feet.

“Well, you’re never very subtle about it,” Marco said. And then: “He’s not there, you can kick all you like.”

Jean propped himself up on his elbows, peering confusedly over at Connie’s empty bedroll, sheets rumpled, as if they’d recently been slept in. “What? Where is he?”

He half-expected Marco to tell him Connie had given up and gone to the landfills, or maybe that he’d been kicked out for pulling a particularly ill-advised prank; his constant fucking with the timeline would have to bear fruit sooner or later. But Marco just shrugged. “Out with Sasha,” he said, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. “They sneak out sometimes to train together.”

“Is that some sort of euphemism?” His flesh crawled just to think of it. Sure, they were cute together, and it seemed inevitable that something like this would happen, but…it was a mental image Jean could do without.

Marco gave a little laugh. “No,” he said, and eased himself up so that he was sitting cross-legged, blankets piled on his lap. “They really are training. Want to sneak out and watch? It’s got to be worth it to see Connie try to bench-press Sasha.”

Jean wasn’t about to miss that for the world. Quietly, they snuck down the ladder, tiptoeing across the creaking floorboards, past sleepers tucked into their bunks. Barefoot out into the yard, chilly despite the crackling flames of the oil-lamps casting a warm red glow across the cracked earth. They cast long shadows as they headed silently past the dorms, passing surreptitious glances and hoping, silently, that they wouldn’t get caught.

By the time they crested the hill the moon was a white disc in the sky; in the strange light, the field looked blue, like huge expanse of water, unmoving. They paused at the edge of the field, watching the faraway silhouettes of Connie and Sasha as they ran laps.

“Well,” Jean said, after a short while. “I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed. Would’ve been fun to wind the two of them up about it. Why’re they doing this, anyway? Is it a bet?”

“He’s kind of insecure,” Marco said, tucking his arms around himself to ward off the cold. The angles of his face were soft in the pale light. “He doesn’t think he’s strong enough to make the top ten. Sasha and Reiner have been helping him out, but he’s scared. He thinks he’ll end up a disappointment to his village.”

Jean wriggled his toes, grass cold and damp beneath his feet. “People tell you a lot, don’t they?”

Marco shrugged. “People trust me,” he said. “They come to me with their problems. Sometimes they need advice, but mostly they just need someone to listen. And I’m good at that, I suppose.” Out in the field, Connie had stopped running, a tiny black shape doubled over, and Sasha seemed to be yelling some kind of barely-audible encouragement, or possibly harassment. “How about you?” Marco said, a little too casually. “Do you have any problems you need to share with someone?”

His breath caught in his chest, just for a moment; he glanced sideways at Marco, who was gazing serenely out at the field, watching shadow-Connie collapse dramatically to the ground. How could he possibly tell Marco anything? _You’re going to die in a little under two years and I’m scared I won’t be able to save you. I’m afraid Annie might have been involved and I don’t know what to do about it. I keep thinking about that stupid bag of apples and I’m afraid I’m going insane._

And the last one, creeping into his mind almost unnoticed: _I’m afraid that if I don’t look away, I’m going to kiss you._

“No,” Jean said, after a short moment. He looked back out at the field, away from Marco, away from danger. “No problems.” He stared out into the dark; Sasha had stopped running and sat down next to Connie. She seemed to be rubbing his head – consoling him or mocking him, Jean wasn’t sure which. Perhaps both. Sasha was into tough love.

 “You’re a bad liar, Jean Kirschtein,” Marco said softly.

When Marco’s hand crept into his, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait! I've been busy with RL commitments recently and I didn't want to just rush the chapter out. Thanks, as always, for your sweet comments and continued readership - I am very grateful for every single reader.
> 
> (Sasha and Connie in this chapter are basically living out my headcanons for the both of them.)
> 
> Next time: The second year of training, and Jean's learning new things every day. And not just about Marco...


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which winter comes, and things get physical. But probably not in the way you're thinking.

The second year of training came with the ebb and flow of activity Jean had come to recognise as a pretty typical pattern. The trainees, taken as a whole, had two natural states of being: an exuberant mass of adolescent energy, hormones and idiocy, or an exhausted lump of bruised, disgruntled teenagers. The first state came with much mischief and stupid games and, more often than not, a strong chance of obtaining some minor injury. The second came with much angst and introspection and gazing at the tips of their boots.

Halfway through the second year, the latter state seemed to settle upon the trainees like the snow blanketing the yard. At morning roll-call, a sea of downcast faces peered blearily out from the fur-lined hoods of their winter uniforms, pink-knuckled fingers curled into a lazy approximation of a salute. Even Shadis, usually keen to correct such lax behaviour in an appropriately violent manner, seemed more subdued than usual. At night, conversations died out early, with trainees burying themselves in their blankets to ward off the midnight chill. Jean would often wake to find Marco curled against him, both blankets wrapped around them like a soft, formless igloo, and he couldn’t really bring himself to hate the cold weather when it meant Marco’s sleeping face inches from his own.

(It might have troubled him, just how comfortable he felt with his limbs tangled in Marco’s, and how sometimes, when everything was still, he’d press his face into the hollow of Marco’s clavicle and just breathe, inhale the scent of him, marvelling quietly at the steady march of his pulse.

It ought to have. But somehow, it felt like this was the way things should be. That it should always have been this way, even before, and somehow Jean just hadn’t realised.)

Sasha and Connie, who hadn’t entirely succumbed to the low-mood contagion, tried several times to coax people into snowball fights, but there were few takers. Even their attempts at crafting replicas of human genitalia out of snow met with only a mild hubbub, with Shadis merely shaking his head at their creations before walking off. The snow-parts had remained in place, growing more and more misshapen and grotesque as the falling snow distorted their (already questionable) forms. They were still there as Jean crossed the yard on the way to training: huge lumps of snow standing proudly outside the girls’ barracks.

Jean had a vague recollection of this happening the first time around, and it wasn't entirely weather-related. Having survived their first year, and with the introduction of blade-training to their weekly schedule, the trainees were finally in a position to understand the full implications of what they were doing here; that all the cross-country running and whizzing around on wires and slashing at sandbags were leading up to a choice. A path. The rest of their lives. The enormity of this realisation had proven too much for most of the trainees to cope comfortably with.

It had never been a problem for Jean back then; he'd made his choice long before he ever signed up to be a trainee. He was going to join the Military Police, and live the rest of his days in safety, and he didn't need a plan B because he wasn't going to fuck it up. That was the benefit of teenage arrogance: you got to skip the mopey 'woe is me' phase entirely and get on with the business of being fucking brilliant.

Apparently, the universe had decided to make him pay the second time around, because suddenly the prospect of joining the Military Police - not to mention the security of the Interior - seemed terribly hollow.

He hadn’t quite figured out how to broach this with Marco yet.

"Hey, Jean!"

Sasha stood over by the equipment shed, snow-shovel in hand. Behind her, an impressive pile of snow formed a pristine, glistening-white hillock. "Connie's supposed to be helping me," she said, indicating the second snow-shovel propped against the shed. She was a little breathless, cheeks pink with the cold. "But he never showed up. Could you give me a hand finishing this?"

"I think I heard him say he was going to help Mina peel vegetables," Jean said, grabbing the shovel; even through his gloves, the cold seemed to gnaw at his fingers. He'd heard no such thing, but it was fun to watch the two of them try - and fail - to pretend that they weren't remotely jealous. Apparently, Sasha was better at it than Connie, because her poker face faltered only a little. "You did all this by yourself, then?"

She shook her head. "Reiner helped out some," she said, scraping snow from the path with the blunt edge of the shovel. Well, Jean thought, that probably accounted for the sheer size of the snowpile. "It's nice to know there are some gentlemen left in the world."

He snorted at that. "Sasha, you're from Dauper," he said, pausing mid-motion. "What the hell would you know about gentlemen?"

He'd expected some kind of repercussion, but Sasha merely continued to shovel, apparently oblivious, attention focused entirely on the job at hand. And he wondered, as he hefted snow onto the pile, if the Mina thing had bothered her a little more than she'd let on. Was she mad at him? Was she mad at Connie? He couldn't really blame her; he'd probably be a little hurt too if Marco abandoned him in favour of helping Eren study...and maybe he was being a little mean-spirited...

Jean was on the verge of apologising when Sasha stopped suddenly, examining her red-tipped fingers with a frown. "I think I left my gloves over there," she said, waving at the far end of the snowpile. "Would you get them for me, please?"

At any other time, he'd have told her to get up off her lazy butt and do it herself, but the power of guilt was difficult to ignore. He shouldered his shovel like a rifle. His boots crunched in the powder, leaving perfect imprints; the compacted snow seemed to sparkle in the pale sunlight, and he could distantly remember a time when that might have pleased him. When had snow become such a mundane thing, he wondered? Probably around the time Levi had regaled them all with stories of men dying beyond the Walls, not from Titans but from the elements; men who'd underestimated the cold and had been found weeks later, once the snow had begun to thaw, frozen solid and perfectly preserved. They hadn't been able to repatriate them properly, Levi had told them; any attempts to move the dead had met with the snapping of frozen limbs, and so they came back in pieces. The lesson, according to Levi, was that everything could kill you, and the next time any of them tracked snow into the barracks without cleaning up after themselves, the arbiter of their doom would not be the cold hands of hypothermia but Levi himself.

After that, none of them had ever really looked at snow in the same way.

There were no gloves on the other side of the snowpile, and Jean stumbled around to the other side, sinking ankle-deep in the powder as he struggled through. It seemed that everything had gone silent very suddenly, like the world was holding its breath. Even Sasha was perfectly still, and it occurred briefly to Jean that this was yet another of his strange, hyperrealistic dreams: that he'd wake any moment to Marco's bemused, sleepy face beside him, and he'd be at a loss to explain the strange sensation that somehow, the dream was actually some kind of memory, lost in the archives of his mind.

(The simple answer was that Jean was starting to lose it. That travelling back in time was inherently bad for a person, and coping with the overlap between old memory and new experience was gnawing holes in his already overtaxed, overburdened brain.

He was strangely calm about this possibility, perhaps because there was very little he could actually do about it.)

This moment of introspection was rudely interrupted by the sudden movement of the snowpile, first shifting and then bursting, raining wet lumps of compacted powder down on Jean’s head. A barely-coherent sound escaped his mouth, and he tried to scramble back but something reached out from the pile; a huge, pale hand, grasping for him, catching his collar. His heart seemed to be attempting a violent escape through his ribcage, and he couldn't blame it; the thing was huge, swathed in loose, leathery skin and shedding snow in sheets. He pulled against its grasp, feet sliding uselessly against the ground, and he was certain that any moment now, he'd wake up. Because Jean Kirschtein had seen a lot of strange and freakish things in his short life thus far, but an abominable snowman hiding in plain sight was stretching the limits.

Time to wake up, Jean. There's no way you can mistake this one for a memory.

The beast reared back, sending Jean skidding backwards. He fell hard, landing on his ass; a shockwave of pain reverberated up his spine, rattling every tooth in his skull. This is it, Jean thought, gazing stupidly up at the sentient snowpile. What a bizarre way to go. He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself for the impact that never came.

What came instead was the familiar filthy cackle of a particular shaven-headed, short-statured trainee, overlaid with the baritone chuckle of someone much bigger, beefier and blonder...

"I can't believe he actually fell for it!"

Jean cracked open one eye just in time to see Connie whip the snow-covered canvas from around him and clamber down from Reiner's shoulders like a bald monkey. The two of them were soaked to the skin and shivering even as they convulsed with laughter, and Jean might have been pissed as hell with the two of them if he weren't so utterly bemused by the entire thing.

"They've tried it on three people and you're the only one who actually got scared," Sasha explained, tugging her gloves from her coat pocket and slipping them casually on. "Marco figured them out pretty much straight away. Christa thought the snowman was cute. And Annie..."

"Annie got angry and punched Reiner in the dick," Connie said, wrapping his arms around himself. His lips were an unflattering shade of purple, teeth chattering like a clockwork toy. "You should've seen the look on your face though, man. Reiner, did you see it?"

"All I saw was your knees," Reiner said, dumping the canvas behind him. He seemed less troubled by the cold, though his hair was plastered wetly to his face. "But I did hear him scream."

"It was a girly scream," Connie said solemnly.

"I hope you both catch pneumonia and die," Jean muttered. Slowly, he picked himself up off the ground. Snow had soaked through his clothes, leaving his backside numb and his trousers clinging to his skin. There seemed no respite from the cold now; he'd have to go to training soaked and frozen, and no doubt endure one of Shadis’s lectures on the importance of professional presentation.

"See, that's exactly why people pick on you," Sasha said. She grabbed Connie by the shoulders and brushed the snow from his head with her gloved fingers. "You've got no sense of humour."

"Unless Marco's telling the joke," said Reiner, so casually that he had to be insinuating something. Jean chose to ignore it, focusing instead on Connie's valiant attempts to zip both himself and Sasha into her winter jacket, and when Reiner wandered off at last he breathed a small sigh of relief.

*

“The hell happened to you, Kirschtein?”

Eren appraised Jean’s bedraggled appearance with disdain, wrapped up snug in his winter jacket. Beside him, Mikasa and Armin peered up from beneath their hoods, politely refraining from commenting, although the expressions on their faces suggested they were equally unimpressed at the state of his uniform.

Jean was still mildly irritated about the whole thing, and no snappy comeback was forthcoming, so he settled for a swiftly-delivered middle finger and joined the formation without so much as a backwards glance. He settled in line beside Marco, who regarded him with mild alarm.

“Dare I ask…?” Marco said.

“I think you probably already know,” Jean replied. “Connie and Reiner happened.”

“Ah. You met the Snow-Titan.”

“Is that what those morons are calling it?”

“You have to give them points for imagination,” Marco said, smiling, probably more at Jean’s grumpiness than the prank itself.

“You say imagination, I say brain injury.” He reached up to the soggy mess of his hair and attempted to finger-comb it into something resembling his usual style. His trousers clung uncomfortably to his thighs, and he was aware of Astrid standing very close behind him, staring intently at his ass, He should probably have been flattered, and likely would have been, if it had happened four years ago. Kind of sad, he thought, as Shadis’s form, still imposing after all this time, appeared at the front of the lineup. Though he was almost fourteen years old physically, the Jean occupying this still-scrawny body was seventeen, and already a terrible, joyless cynic. Was it a consequence of the things he’d seen and done, or had he always been fated to turn out this way? It seemed like there’d been a dark, blank space inside him for such a long time, and he’d begun to think it could never be fixed.

It seemed fitting that Marco should be the one to fix it. That his presence should reawaken the child in Jean, make him see that the world was a good place, overall; despite all the blood spilt and the sheer abundance of bones strewn out beyond Wall Rose, bleached over the years by the sun. Because a world with Marco in it – even a cruel, unpredictable world – was infinitely sweeter than any world without him.

This was the world Jean now inhabited, and – providing he didn’t completely mess it up – would inhabit from now on. Because he wasn’t going back. Whether or not this counted as reality seemed irrelevant, and Jean knew he was a usurper here, a parasite inhabiting the body of some other-him, but he was doing it right this time, and that seemed the only thing that mattered. Fuck the natural order, fuck the timeline, and fuck fate. Marco was going to live, and they were going to be happy, and everything else was secondary.

“You all managed to drag yourselves out of bed. Congratulations.” Somehow, despite the hairless expanse of his exposed skull, Shadis seemed almost entirely unaffected by the cold, shunning winter jackets on the basis that ‘real soldiers do not fear the elements, they master the elements’ (Jean would’ve liked to hear what Levi had to say about that.) “Due to the adverse weather conditions…” complete with scornful air quotes “…manoeuvre gear training is deferred until it’s deemed safe enough for you to do what you came here to do without cracking your precious little skulls open.” Side-eye at Jean, just obvious enough so that the people in the front row turned briefly to look at him. “Therefore. Half of you will be taking extra lessons in hand-to-hand combat, and the rest will get to play with guns. You-” Shadis waved his hand vaguely at the left side of the lineup “-go break each other’s noses. The rest of you, get down to the firing range. Not you, Bodt, you’re on firearms training too.”

The crowd began to part, heading in their designated directions. Marco paused mid-stride, turning to look at the instructor.

“You’re the only one capable of aiming a rifle,” Jean said. “I think he needs you to show the rest of them how not to shoot their own feet off.”

“They’re not that bad,” Marco said.

“Watch Bertholdt,” Jean said. “Actually, don’t. He holds a rifle like it’s going to bite him. You’ll die laughing.”

Marco smirked at that. “I’d better not, then. How would you ever cope without me?”

Badly, Jean thought, taking in Marco’s oblivious grin; the boy had no idea what might happen to him a little over a year from now, and no idea of the gnarled web of half-baked plans cluttering Jean’s mind. Very, very badly.

“I’m sure I’d manage,” Jean said, nudging him with an elbow. “Go on, before he changes his mind and sends you to battle the Snow Titan or something.”

He watched Marco depart, moving through the crowd, greeting people Jean barely knew as if they were old, dear friends. And he hadn’t realised he’d been staring until he heard a small, impatient cough from behind him; he turned, expecting Shadis, but saw Annie instead.

“We’ve been paired up,” she said, tossing him the wooden knife. The bored monotone of her voice told Jean everything he needed to know: hurry up and let me kick your ass so we can get this over with. He’d observed her, before, watched the way she fought; not frantic and scrappy, nor rigid and controlled as they were taught, but fluid, like she’d learned to fight before she could walk. He was no more equipped to take her on for it, though, and as she pulled into her familiar stance, bunched fists raised, he had an inkling that this was probably going to hurt.

“Lucky me,” Jean muttered. He clutched the stupid, ragged-edged dagger in his left hand – it looked as if someone had carved it with their feet – and immediately ducked to the right, narrowly avoiding a swift kick to the ribs. The way Annie moved was a thing of beauty; her legs formed a perfect arc as they swung, slicing through the air with the tip of her boot pointed inwards. She landed without missing a step and lashed out immediately with the flat of her hand; she landed a glancing blow to Jean’s elbow, and it stung fiercely but he held the knife, relishing the sharp ache as it shimmied down to the tips of his fingers.

“You’re quick,” she said. It seemed a neutral statement but it might have been a compliment. It was hard to tell with Annie.

“Self-preservation,” Jean replied, and swerved just in time to dodge the kick aimed at his kneecaps. He stumbled over his own feet, barely keeping upright. "Running from danger is my special skill."

There wasn't even the hint of a smile as she resumed her stance, watching him feint and dodge at the slightest twitch of her muscles, and he knew he was careening headfirst into an asskicking but the ghost of his former arrogance was a tiny, goading voice in the back of his mind - _you can take her, you've seen her fight._

She deserves this, for what she did.

And then, a smaller voice:

_For what she might have done._

And then she brought her forearm up into Jean's throat, abruptly silencing that little voice as he let out a gasp; her knee drove into his gut, just hard enough to send black stars dancing across his field of vision, and then he was down on his knees, and Annie pried the knife from his fingers as easy as plucking a daisy.

"Your turn," she said.

Sheer bullheadedness spurred him on; he staggered to his feet, breathing in great, horsey gasps through his wide-open mouth. His gut seemed to be on fire, flames licking at his lungs and turning his breath to steam. The sensible thing, he thought, would be to take a minute to regroup. But Annie was staring at him with that bored, expectant expression, like she was just waiting for him to give up, to cry mercy. He would take her down this time. He would teach her a lesson in making assumptions.

She drew her fists up as he stood, watching him with those pale eyes. That was how Jean had known it was her. The Titan had had Annie's eyes; staring at them now, he remembered swooping through the sky, Armin wounded and dazed beneath him and Reiner close behind, and he remembered meeting those eyes, sensing the fierce intelligence and cruelty beneath as the Titan shot out a hand, catching his wire and cutting his flight short.

He remembered the cold, numb certainty that he was going to die.

Jean shot out an arm, so quick Annie barely saw it coming; she dodged at the last second, his fist skimming the tips of her hair as she skipped neatly out of his path. The sheer force of it left him all the more breathless. She seemed to allow him a moment's grace, passing the knife between her hands as he drew in as much air as his aching lungs would allow.

"You don't like me," she said, after a moment.

"Not many people do," Jean replied, straightening back up. "You're not exactly approachable."

She lunged at him with the wooden knife, and he caught her wrist - more accident than intention - and yanked her arm back. She let out a hiss of pain, teeth clenched; she had small, neat teeth, like a tiny carnivore, and that moment of observation was all Annie needed to work free. She twisted in his grip, rammed Jean's own arm up into the side of his head; a heel to the back of his knee sent him down. The world pitched violently sideways as he hit the cold ground, bones rattling like a sackful of pebbles.

He felt Annie's foot on his chest.

"I frighten you, don’t I?" she said, leaning over him; suddenly she was imposing, a looming figure against a dark sky. “I wonder why?" She wasn’t remotely breathless, as composed and calm as she always was, and it struck Jean that she wasn’t so much asking a question as stating a fact. The sole of her boot ground painfully into the space between his ribs, but he did not wince, staring up instead at her calm blue eyes – she was a frozen lake, cold and serene and dangerous, blank ice belying the black, treacherous water beneath. And Jean realised then what a fool he’d been to discount Annie.

“I’m not a brave person,” Jean said.

She made a small, derisive sound and lifted her boot, just enough so that Jean could wriggle out from beneath her. He scuttled backwards, crab-like, hands flat against the slush-damp earth. People were watching them, fascinated as always by Annie’s uncanny ability to floor people taller and heavier than her with ease. Once upon a time, he might’ve been humiliated, but all he felt was frustration, boiling up inside. Because he didn’t know the truth, and there was no easy way to find it out. He wanted to grab Annie by the shoulders, pin her to the ground and say _I know about you. I know what you can do_. _And if you touch Marco I’ll kill you myself_. He wanted to see her eyes widen in shock, to see something on her face other than boredom. Maybe she'd kill him. Would she go so far? Or was her secret so fantastical, so far-fetched without Eren and his ability to bring it into stark focus? No, Jean would be shouting into the void; they'd think him a madman, chasing shadows and calling them ghosts.

He got back to his feet, brushing gravel and debris from his clothes. She still held the knife, pointing downwards from her fist like a single serrated tooth. “I thought you’d be happy,” Jean said. “Intimidating people is what you’re good at. It’s what you do. Doesn’t it feel good to see it in action?”

The twitch of her mouth was almost imperceptible, but he saw it. She struck out with the knife and he was ready for her this time, dropping low and driving a shoulder into her stomach. She let out a hiss of surprise, but caught his hand as it swung up, aiming to dislodge the knife from her grip. Her fingers interlaced with his for a second, a clash of knuckles, and they stood like that for a second, neither willing to give up any ground.

“You don’t fear me,” she said, knuckles tight around his fingers. “You’re frightened of what I might do to Marco.”

Well. She had him there. His surprise gave her the edge; she pushed hard, sending Jean back down, but he righted himself just in time, landing on his heels. And when he came back she was ready for him, catching him mid-manoeuvre so that his head was trapped beneath her arm. His neck caught in the crook of her elbow, and she squeezed, so hard that it seemed his eyes were about to pop free of their sockets. He couldn’t breathe. This must be how Marco felt, he thought, watching hazily as the other recruits paused in their own skirmishes to stare at Jean. He made for pitiful viewing: kneeling on grazed knees, face swollen and numb like an overripe grape, clawing ineffectually at Annie’s arms. When she released him, grasping a handful hair to lift his face towards her, he was almost relieved.

“I may not be the friendliest individual, nor the most approachable,” she said quietly; her fingers were cold against his scalp. “And I may not be the most merciful. But let me tell you this, Jean. I'm no monster. Marco is a good person. He’s always been kind to me. That’s not something I forget.”

Abruptly, she released him; his instinct was to crumple to the ground, curl up in a ball and stay there, but he rose to his feet, smoothing his hair as he went, and that almost provoked a wry smile from her; he might look like week-old shit, but his hair was always just so. “I’m no threat to Marco,” Annie said. “You’d be better off looking out for yourself. That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it, Jean?”

He wanted to believe her. More than anything, he wanted to take her at her word, but that was something else he’d learned the hard way. Words were cheap, and desperate people did desperate things, and the relative goodness of a person didn’t matter when they were in your way.

Still. Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe Jean’s instinct about her had been right in the first place. And it wasn't much to go on, but it would have to do.

Wordlessly, Annie placed the knife in his hand and made to walk away, but stopped in her tracks as something lumpen and misshapen started across the field towards them. Jean squinted in the low light, watching as people first recoiled in horror, then drew in closer for a better look. And as the thing approached, moving with an awkward, waddling gait, he heard a familiar voice emanate from its middle:

“Hey! Hey look at us, we’re conjoined twins!”

Connie’s face was barely visible, peeking out from Sasha’s bulging jacket; Sasha’s chin rested on his head, his feet balancing precariously on her own as they traversed the icy ground, arms outstretched and stuffed, sausage-like, into her jacket sleeves. The two of them wore grins so wide and so ridiculous that even Annie’s gaze seemed to soften, just for a moment.

“What are they good at?” Jean asked. He tossed her the knife and couldn’t help but smirk a little as she fumbled; the knife slipped through her fingers and clattered to the floor, and he thought he could feel the weight of her gaze heavy on his shoulders as he headed for the firing range in search of Marco. It was time they talked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What would a chapter be without a little note at the end to say thank you to all of you for reading? Nothing, that's what. This fic has just entered the penultimate arc - I foresee three or four more chapters to go. And they still haven't kissed yet! Gotta do something about that, hmm...
> 
> (Thank you all <333)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jean tells a small truth and a big lie, and time is beginning to run out.

_E quandu vogghiu non vuliri vogghiu,_   
_e quandu cercu fùiri m'impressu;_   
_sù appuntu comu la candila all'ogghiu:_   
_tu mi consumi et iu ti vegnu appressu_   
  
_And when I want, I do not want to want_   
_and when I try to flee, I come still closer;_   
_I am exactly like a candle in oil:_   
_you are consuming me and I still follow you_

*  
  
In the heady, dreamlike haze of the aftermath, nursing a bruised mouth and a thoroughly bemused brain, it occurred to Jean that he had done a great many things in his time worthy of a punch in the face. He'd done a great many things to Marco worthy of a punch in the face. But to find himself on the receiving end of one - well-deserved, no doubt about it - and to see Marco there, staring in horror at his bunched fist, at Jean's split lip, the fire in his eyes still burning despite his instantaneous regret...well, Jean had never been under any illusions about being an asshole, but this was too far. Too much. And much later on, with his jaw throbbing like a constant, pulsing reminder of his utter idiocy, it seemed to Jean that a small part of him might have been trying to push Marco away. That perhaps a distant but live Marco was preferable to the pain of losing him forever twice over.

  
But it hadn't felt that way at the time.

  
It happened like this. The two of them were walking back from training together, sharing the weight of the practise rifles bundled in canvas and held aloft with rope. They'd been talking about the usual things - Connie and Sasha's latest sideshow act, how much of a hardass Shadis was being lately, Bertholdt's hilarious incompatibility with firearms - "The recoil knocked him flat on his ass," Marco had said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. "He kept looking at the rifle like it'd done it on purpose. I think he was offended by it. And Reiner’s a natural so he just couldn’t understand how someone as smart and skilled as Bert can’t seem to handle basic firearms training."  

And then Jean said "Marco, I need to talk to you about something."

The abrupt change in tone must have sent alarm bells ringing, because Marco frowned, tugging the drooping bundle of rifles back up to waist height. "You can talk to me about anything," he said, tone neutral, remnants of his mirth dissipating like steam. He'd never been one to badger for details. Jean liked that about him. He liked a lot of things about him. "What's on your mind?"

“We can’t talk about it here. It’s sort of a private matter,” Jean said, painfully aware of how awkward he sounded. He studiously avoided Marco’s calm gaze, wondering what he must think. Heart-to-heart talks on various matters were almost a rite of passage at this age, and Marco had assumed the role of ‘confidante’ for so many of the trainees that Jean was beginning to think he should start charging a fee. “Can we just…put these damn things away first? I’m getting blisters on my palms.”

“You’re too delicate for this business,” Marco said, and Jean could almost feel the smile that followed; the asymmetrical quirk of the lips which translated as I’m kidding, don’t take offence. “Okay, the munitions shed is just over there. Let’s get this stuff packed away.” There was a brief pause. He was assessing the situation, gauging Jean’s mood, attuned to the pressures of his emotions as any barometer. “You’re okay though, aren’t you?”

“I will be,” Jean said, far from certain. Even if all his well-laid plains came to fruition there was no guarantee that it would solve anything – there was still Trost to contend with. And worse, alteration of the timeline might only lead to a different end: perhaps he’d convince Marco to give up his Military Police ambitions (and wouldn’t that be hard enough? Shattering the dreams of the one person he cared the most about?) But what kind of possibilities did that open up? Perhaps Marco would find himself at the mercy of the Female Titan instead. Perhaps Marco was always destined to die. 

Perhaps Marco was his lesson to never take anything for granted. To live, with all his heart and being, because tomorrow it might all be over.

He shoved that thought back into the recesses of his mind.

They walked the rest of the short distance in silence. In the sudden absence of trainees the yard was hushed and empty; a fresh scattering of snow had begun to fall, fluttering from the grey-blanketed sky like ashes. It felt horribly solemn, somehow, and the crunch of their boots against the hard crust of yesterday’s snow seemed too loud. Jean had been exaggerating about the blisters on his palms, but in the absence of his gloves his skin had turned a livid pink and a needling sensation had set in, rendering his fingers all but useless. By the time they reached the munitions shed – a shabby brick-built construction sitting at the far end of the barracks – Jean would have gladly chewed his own fingers off for a hot cup of Sasha’s nettle-and-blackberry tea. 

There was no point in complaining. Marco would only shoot him that enigmatic not-quite-a-smile and ask him why his gloves were still in his pockets. The worst thing was, he’d be completely right. Jean was not about to grant him the satisfaction.

Marco unlocked the door with the key looped around his neck. It was a testament to his reliability that Shadis trusted him with a building full of firearms. Shadis seemed to be a relatively sound judge of character, and certainty, he’d been able to accurately summarise the personality and abilities of most of the trainees in a single sentence (for example: “Eren Jaeger: a determined and energetic idiot, certain to succeed through his inability to recognise when to quit.”) But if he honestly thought Marco was above the sort of benign teenage devilry the rest of them were so fond of, then he was very much mistaken.

“Just drop them over there,” Marco said, indicating an empty space on the floor with one gloved finger. His breath was a white cloud in the relative gloom. “We’ll be using them again tomorrow so it seems silly to put them all back again. And if I get here early, Shadis will never know.”

“One day,” Jean said, puffing a little with effort, “they’ll work out you’re not the angel they think you are.”

His dark eyes flashed with mischief. “That’ll be an interesting day,” he said. 

Between them, they eased the bundle to the ground. Jean’s arms and back were already sore from the beating Annie had bestowed upon him. He arched his spine gently inwards, stretching too-tight muscles with a series of pops and clicks. His hip throbbed dully in the cold. It might have made him wince, but this was small stuff compared to the early days of training. Those aches and pains seemed a distant memory now. It seemed almost ludicrous that he’d suffered through it twice. 

In the corner of his eye he saw Marco peel off his gloves and begin to massage his shoulder with the pads of his fingers. The rifle recoil was something Jean had never really got used to. You had to be pretty sturdy to withstand it, and despite his developing musculature Jean was a lot more fragile than Marco. 

Marco’s fingers worked in slow, deliberate circles, pressing hard into the ball of his shoulder. Jean could almost feel them against his own tired muscles, flat, broad fingertips firm and soothing. The dry warmth of his hands, delicious against Jean’s skin. 

“So,” Jean said, tearing his eyes away and affecting a casual tone. “Can we talk?”

“If you’re ready to,” Marco said.

“It’s not a big thing,” Jean said. “I mean…I just…” He’d rehearsed this in his head, crossing the training yard with Annie’s eyes burning holes in the back of his neck. A simple, blunt announcement: Marco, I’ve decided to join the Survey Corps when we graduate, and I want you to come with me. But there was something in the way Marco was looking at him, in his endless patience, in the concern hiding just beneath the surface of those calm dark eyes, and suddenly the idea of issuing demands like that seemed assholish to a degree beyond which even Jean felt comfortable. 

The words were a dry glut in his throat, desperate to be spoken. He licked his lips and swallowed them down, tasting crisp air, the faint tang of sweat.

“I’ve been thinking a lot,” he said, flexing his sore fingers, “about what happens when all of this is over. When we graduate. And I mean…I know I’ve talked a lot about graduating in the Top Ten and making the Military Police and…and all of that stuff. And I’m going to hate myself a little bit for what I say next, but…like I said, I’ve been thinking. A lot. Too much.” He paused to swallow. His mouth suddenly seemed full of dust, but Marco was perfectly still, perfectly attentive, and so he kept on. “But I’ve been listening to Jaeger. And he’s full of shit, mostly, but sometimes he makes a little bit of sense. There something he said to me once that I can’t get out of my head. He said ‘If you think reality is just living comfortably and following your own whims, can you seriously dare to call yourself a soldier?’” 

It wasn’t strictly a lie. But he was about to ask Marco to give up a lifetime of dreams and aspirations, and it stuck in his throat that this was all the truth he could give him. The reality - unvarnished, untampered with - would probably terrify him. Was there a sane way to phrase it? _'I came back from the future to save your life but I realised that I can't leave everyone else behind, not knowing the way everything is eventually going to turn out. But I'm greedy and possessive and I intend to take advantage of your good nature so you'll throw away your ambitions and join the Survey Corps with me. Because I'm a selfish bastard, and I can't stand to spend the rest of my life without you after working so hard to keep you alive.'_

And when he put it like that, he did hate himself, just a little bit. He hated that he'd ever thought of the Military Police as the easy way out. He hated that he no longer thought of it that way. Those long months after Marco's death had changed him in ways he was only beginning to realise. And only some of it was Marco's doing; Annie's treachery and Mikasa's bravery and Armin, that scared little mouse of a boy who'd grown a backbone and turned lion at last; who'd led Annie straight into the trap, who understood that sacrifice was a necessity in this uncertain world. And Eren. Humanity's secret weapon. Jean had witnessed all these things and had stood by, powerless, as the carapace of his selfishness had been peeled apart and stripped away.

How could he call himself a soldier if he turned his back on all of them, left them to make those sacrifices without him? 

The thought of that cushy life made Jean's heart ache with longing, but it also turned his stomach. He'd held Marco's bones in the palm of his hand, cried bitterly at the senselessness of his loss. He'd seen the tears stream down Connie's face and heard Sasha sing a quiet requiem, felt the gravity of their loss weighing heavy on each and every one of them - children, still, but irreversibly broken now.

“Look at us, Marco. I don’t mean to sound arrogant but we’re talented. We’re good. Maybe not as good as Mikasa, or Annie, or Reiner, but we are good. Say we do graduate in the Top Ten. Doesn’t it seem kind of perverse to you that our reward for being the best, the strongest, the most useful to humanity, is to never have to see a Titan as long as we live? To be effectively useless for the rest of our lives?”

“We’d be protecting the King,” Marco said, a little indignantly, but there was something hesitant in his posture. “Keeping order. It’s an important job, Jean, we wouldn't be useless at all.”

“I don’t doubt that. But think about it. Think about the training we do. We train to use manoeuvre gear and to hit Titans right in the sweet spot. Most of what we’re marked on is specifically related to our ability to take on and take down Titans. That’s our purpose. That’s what all of this…” he gestured around with his palm, indicating the eerie, silent grey world beyond the storeroom door “…is setting us up for. I've had my head up my ass for a long time, Marco. I thought that if I could ace these three years and win myself a spot in the Military Police, I'd be safe, and comfortable. I'd never have to fear anything again. But I was wrong. I found that out the hard way."

Marco's expression was midway between 'wryly amused' and 'troubled'. Jean could understand that; here before him was a boy who looked like Jean and walked like Jean but spoke like someone else entirely. Well, there was a first time for everything. "Jean, for as long as I've known you you've prioritised your own ambitions above most other things," Marco said, leaning back against the storage shelves. He folded his arms across his chest, a curiously protective gesture. "I really don't know what's brought on this change of heart, but it sounds like you're really passionate about it and...well, I'm glad. Really I am. I mean, from a selfish point of view I'd really like you to join the Military Police with me. I'd be a little lonely without you. But if your heart's not in it..." he smiled, head tilted slightly, trying to get the measure of this new Jean. "Well, the Military Police is sort of a vocation, isn't it? I'm not trying to sound noble or anything but I think you really have to want to devote yourself to the protection of the King..."

"Marco, you're not getting it." God, had he always been this naive? He'd always thought of Marco as astute, but apparently figuring out the human condition and picking apart the vagaries of inter-Wall politics were not necessarily mutually inclusive. "It's all a sham. A farce. The kind of people who join the Military Police...it's the one guaranteed way to avoid being Titan-fodder. Most of the remaining trainees will join the Garrison and the few left - the really brave and the really stupid - they'll join the Survey Corps. Which ones do you think will still be alive in ten years? Twenty years?" His heart was dancing a frantic jig against his breastbone. He paused, taking a deep breath. The air smelled of mildew and gunpowder and fresh, wet snow. "You probably think I've gone nuts. Maybe that bump on the head knocked something loose. They don't call it the Suicide Corps for nothing, right? But what happened in Shiganshina is going to happen again. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. I feel it. And that means that every single one of us is in danger."

"You can possibly know that. But say for one minute that you’re right...even if it did happen." The look on Marco's face suggested that he was far from convinced. "Why the Survey Corps? Why would you want to actively put yourself in harm's way like that?" Unspoken but implicit: why wouldn't you save yourself first, the way you always do? And that stung worse than any dislocated joint or knock to the head ever had. 

"I don't want to die, Marco," Jean said, realising suddenly just how _tired_ he sounded. How much reliving the past had taken out of him. How old he was, stuck inside this stupid adolescent body. "I want to live. More than anything else, I want to live. And I'm not going to stand here and spout bullshit about how I want to make a difference to the world, and how I want to leave behind a better future for our grandchildren...I don't care about any of that. I care about me, and I care about you, and whatever future we have...however short it might be...I don't want to spend it with my fingers in my ears, pretending I'm safe behind Wall Sina while the world burns around me."

Marco didn't answer. He was staring at Jean with his brow furrowed so deeply that his eyebrows seemed to have merged into one. His upper body was propped against the storage shelf, shoulders rigid against the rough brickwork. His military-issue peacoat was a little too baggy across his broad shoulders, a little too long on his thighs. It didn't suit him, Jean decided. He looked better in uniform, all long, sleek limbs and proud posture, not huddled away in miles of loose fabric. 

"I'm sorry to spring all this on you," Jean said, after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his own coat, fiddling absently with the accumulated lint and debris. Suddenly, he couldn't look Marco in the eye anymore. _Still every inch the coward, Kirschtein_. "But I want you to come with me. To the Survey Corps. Look, I..."

"I can't," Marco said.

He looked up sharply. "What?"

"I can't. Come with you, I mean." He was obviously shooting for 'assertive' but had somehow hit 'apologetic' instead. "It's good of you to ask me, but...I can't, Jean. I've been aiming for this my entire life. Since I was old enough to know what the Military Police were." His eyes were bright, imploring, and somehow that only conspired to piss Jean off, just a little. Good of him to ask? There was nothing good about it, and even Marco in his infinite patience must be able to see the selfishness of Jean's motives. "I have to choose my own future, Jean. Just like you're choosing yours. And you have to trust me to make the choice. I've wanted this for so long. I've worked so hard..."

Nausea crept into Jean's throat. The timeline was skewing, twisting, and even as he swallowed down a glut of bile he could feel the infinite possibilities ahead of him - the future, pliant beneath his fingers. 

"But why? What's so damn amazing about the MIlitary Police anyway?" He could feel himself veering sharply into 'asshole' territory but couldn't halt his descent; in hindsight Jean would mark this as the point where he ought to have stopped, called time on the conversation and broached the subject another time. But there was a fierce heat in his chest and his fingers twitched with frustration, and he could no more let it go than a Titan could release its prey. It was there, in the palm of his hand, and the churning of his stomach and the slow spin in his head betrayed just how close he was to changing the future. He just had to _push_. Just a little further...

"When I was a little boy," Marco said, a faraway smile playing at his lips "I'd read stories about the King, and all the princes and princesses in Sina. Some of the boys in Jinae wanted to grow up to be kings but I knew that wasn't possible. Definitely not for people like us. So I decided I would join the Military Police. For someone like me to make it all the way to Sina...to serve the King and keep order..." he shook his head. "Maybe it's different for you. You grew up in Trost, where there were other opportunities. But in Jinae, you really only have three choices: farmer, fisherman or the military. When I told my mother what I wanted to do, she cried. She was proud of me. Jean, if I make the Military Police I'll be the first person from Jinae in twenty years to get there. I want to make my mother proud. I can't let her down."

And then, dizzy and timesick and giddy with the rush of it all, Jean's lips parted, and past-Jean took briefly over, frustrated and angry; even as the words escaped he wished he could claw them back into his stupid idiot mouth. "She's dead, Marco, how the hell are you gonna..."

A bright flare of pain suddenly engulfed his face, flowing up like liquid fire, and he was faintly aware that Marco's hand was retracting, his fingers bunched into a tight fist, and that the thin red smear across his knuckles was Jean's blood. Jean reeled back, hitting the wall of the shed with a thump. Stunned, he swallowed hard and tasted copper. 

Marco was staring in horror at his own bunched fist, as if it had somehow acted independently of his brain but Jean knew, even through the thick head-haze of his own timesickness, that Marco had meant it. The remnants of a profound anger lingered in the dark of his eyes, in the tight set of his mouth, and he could be dangerous if he chose to be.

Jean gripped the brickwork with cold fingers. Leaned forward and spat red onto the concrete. His mouth was simultaneously numb and throbbing. He ran a tentative tongue across his lower lip, feeling the rift in the skin, the thin, sharp pain where he probed it with his tongue. "You punched me in the fucking face," Jean said, and did not like the hurt in his voice. The shrillness of it. 

And Marco stepped forward, strangely imposing in that ugly peacoat, shoulders rigid as stone; Jean's hands shot out, instinctive, but Marco was too quick, too clever. His hands wound around Jean's lapels, pulled him sharply upright, and he could feel the heat of Marco's skin, the tremor in his fingers, could smell the cordite in his hair. His eyes were wide, afire with some terrible energy, and there was a split second of stillness in which Jean could almost feel the press of Marco's mouth against his own; could almost taste him, the dry warmth of his lips and the gentle pressure of his tongue and the sweet-sour tang of his own blood. And he wanted it. He wanted it more than he'd wanted anything in his life.

He had never deserved anything so little.

"Why would you say something like that?" The sheer despair in Marco's voice was enough to shatter the illusory threat of him. Slowly, he released Jean, shoulders sagging, and the moment was gone. He looked small, and deflated, and weary. He probably was.

"I'm sorry," Jean mumbled. "I'm an asshole."

"Yeah." He glanced down at the smear of blood across his knuckles. His voice was flat. "Yeah, you are."

"I'm sorry Marco." The dizziness was subsiding now, his vision settling, and there was an awful coldness in his gut, a heavy sensation, like he'd just irreversibly fucked something up. He put out a hand, resting it gently against Marco's shoulder. To his surprise, Marco acquiesced. Gently, they slid to the floor, drawing their knees up to their chests. They sat there huddled against the chill wind, staring at the floorboards and silently sharing each other's warmth.

"I just..." Marco began, after a short while. Jean peered up at him, waiting. For once, he would let Marco speak uninterrupted. The other boy shook his head, snow-damp hair askew and hanging in his eyes, staring sadly at the opposite wall. "I just miss my mum sometimes."

Regret was a sour taste in Jean's throat. "I know," he said, a little hoarsely, and hated himself for it. Because he did know, and he'd said it anyway, and for all he'd learned and grown and matured he was still a bitter little bastard with a too-short fuse.  Marco deserved better.

"Who are you, Jean?" Marco's hands were clasped atop his knees, fingers fidgeting ceaselessly in his agitation. "Sometimes I feel like I know you inside-out. Like you're a book I've read a hundred times over. And just when I think I've finally found you, you change. You say something or do something and...everything I knew about you goes out of the window. I have to start over. It's like I've rediscovered you so many times and still I barely know anything at all. And I like you, Jean. In spite of everything, I like you. I want to know everything about you, but I can't keep chasing you." He sighed. It was a weary sort of sigh, the kind Jean associated with men much older and much more jaded than themselves. "It feels like I knew you once. Does that sound stupid? I feel like we were best friends once, a long time ago. But you went away, and you came back different, and I don't know how to go back to the way it was before."

"Maybe we were," Jean said quietly. "In a past life."

"Maybe," Marco agreed. And then: "But we still can be. Best friends, I mean. Maybe all we need is time."

_Time_ , Jean thought, _is the one thing I have in abundance. Too much time. Too many years. I just want this to be over, now. Before I lose it completely. Before I push you away_.  
He reached up a hand, curling cold fingers through Marco's. He pulled their hands across to his own lap, settling Marco's palm atop his knee. There was a faint constellation of freckles across the back of his hand, obscured by the dried smear of Jean’s blood. He brushed his thumb across, feeling the topography of Marco’s knuckles, the delicate scaffold of the small bones beneath the skin.

"I shouldn't have hit you," Marco said.

"I deserved it," Jean said. 

"See, that's what I mean." He leaned his head back, resting it against the bricks, eyeing Jean with curiosity. "One minute you're on top the of the world, telling me all this inspirational stuff about how you've had a change of heart and not wanting to let the world burn while you live the good life. And then you flat-out tell me you deserve a punch in the face. How can both things be true?"

"I should never have said...the thing that I said." It wasn't me, he wanted to protest, but it was a cop-out, a shitty excuse; it was him, that little angry boy from the past who couldn't stand to lose an argument, not even against Marco. And that same voice piped up in the back of his head, vicious and triumphant: _See, this is why he never told you about his mother before. He knew what you were capable of_. "So yeah, I deserved it. It's okay, Marco. You're allowed to be angry."

"Not to hurt you, though."

"Yeah, well..." He rubbed his jaw absently, feeling the deep ache in the bone. He was going to have one hell of a bruise tomorrow. "I guess we're even on that count."

Marco reached out with his free hand, tentatively stroking Jean's cheek with his thumb. His hands were gentle, hesitant, moving slowly down to the swell of his jaw. He seemed fully absorbed in this task, tracing the faint outward bloom of the bruise; his thumb eased beneath Jean's chin, bringing his face up, and the cold nub of Marco's nose brushed against his own. Jean's heart seemed to stutter, pulsating erratically like a small bird encaged in his chest. This was how it was supposed to be, he realised. Every cell in his body knew it, drawn to Marco as if some strange force, and he felt no shame, no fear, only certainty...

  
"Oh, hey! That's where you two disappeared off to."

They broke abruptly apart, staring at the tiny figure in the doorway with identical expressions of wide-eyed alarm.

"C'mon!" No longer encased in Sasha's winter parka, Connie seemed even smaller than usual, but no less ebullient. The mouse-grey stubble atop his head was speckled with fat snowflakes, sparkling in the pale light as they melted slowly. Even his eyelashes glistened with meltwater. "Sasha's on dinner duty, and she's promised us all extra-big portions! Let's get in there before it all runs out." 

Jean and Marco exchanged sheepish glances. The circumstances in which he'd discovered them seemed to have gone completely over Connie's fuzzy little head. Thank goodness for complete idiocy, Jean thought, struggling to his feet. He ached all over; he did not want to guess what percentage of his body was covered in bruises, but he was willing to bet that some asshole would comment on it in the showers tomorrow. 

He held out a hand to Marco, who took it gratefully, easing himself to his feet with considerably less trouble than Jean. 

"We're okay," Jean said, when Connie had disappeared back out into the yard. "Aren't we?"

"We're okay." Marco's smile was soft and sad. He hadn't let go of Jean's hand, and Jean was fine with that. "But are you? You'd tell me if there was anything wrong, wouldn't you?"

"I'm fine," Jean said. They started out into the yard, fingers still loosely entwined. Savouring each other's warmth, each other's closeness. "I just...I guess I should've brought all of this up earlier. Before I got all stressed out about it. But...yeah. Everything's fine. I promise. I won't ever go off like that again."

And as he carried on ahead, leaving Marco to lock up the munitions shed, the lie seemed to hang like a blade suspended directly over his head; more promises he wasn't sure he could keep, not with all the work he still had to do and the threat of timesickness lingering at every turn. 

But he couldn't afford to fuck this up. Not now. Not with Trost looming just over the horizon, and the uncertainty dogging him at every step. This would be the pivotal year, and the utter chaos which constituted his grand plan would have to become reality very, very fucking soon.

Nine months left.

It was almost over, and Jean Kirschtein had never been less ready.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, I want to apologise profoundly for the delay in getting this chapter out, and to thank everyone who has left comments, sent messages on Tumblr or just sat at their computer periodically checking for updates. I promise the next chapter will not take quite so long, and I hope with all my silly little heart that this chapter made up for the delay.
> 
> As always, my Tumblr is [here](http://revolvermonkcelot.tumblr.com) and you are all more than welcome to pop by and flail at stuff with me, or just come sit down while I make you a nice cup of tea as a thank-you for your patient.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jean forgets, and Jean remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....I am so, so sorry.
> 
> No, really I am. Last year really took it out of me, and I let this fic slip, and I shouldn't have. I'm sorry to have kept you all waiting so long, and if you've hung around and waited and you're still reading...thank you, so so much. I promise the final chapter won't take anywhere near as long. And I hope this was worth the wait.

The grass in the meadow had grown tall since the start of spring, a thick carpet of lush green reaching almost to their knees. Fat droplets of dew soaked into the fabric of Jean's trousers; the rich scent of damp earth rose as they strode, determined, through the long grass.

The sun was high above them, part-obscured by a thin haze of wispy cloud, and the warmth of it seemed to seep beneath Jean's skin, slowly permeating his bones, chasing out the perpetual chill that had taken up residence with the first frost and stayed the entire winter. Even the tree at the centre of the meadow seemed different; taller somehow, without snow weighing heavy upon its boughs. Pale buds studded the branches like clusters of peridots, glistening with last night's rainfall. In the wake of a hard winter, it seemed as though the world had been born again, and Jean Kirschtein was absurdly glad to witness it.

"I don't even know if I'll still be able to climb it," Marco said, eyeing the tree with some trepidation. "Does it look taller to you?"

"Relax," Jean said. He side-eyed Marco; his dark hair had grown out a little and hung shaggy around his ears, strands grazing his eyelashes. Jean knew his own hair wasn't much tidier - an unruly mop that took forever to smooth down in the morning. Eventually, Shadis would issue his usual demand that they _make themselves look decent_ ("You're soldiers, not goddamn show ponies. Keep it tidy.") "If Connie can get up there without trouble, you ought to be fine."

"I'm pretty sure Connie's half-lizard. He can probably walk on the ceiling."

"You probably won't even _have_ to climb, anyway. Not the way you're growing."

Marco gave him a somewhat bashful smile. "I don't understand it," he said, looking down at the cuffs of his trousers - he'd had an unexpected growth spurt at some point over the winter and now his ankles were exposed, his clothing at the mercy of his newly-elongated legs. "Nobody else in my family is tall."

"Stand next to Bertholdt if it makes you feel better.”

“Oh, I don’t mind it. It’s just that my ankles get cold.”

They reached the base of the tree. Marco was right: it did look taller, the bark smoother. They’d last climbed the tree in the dying days of summer; the sweet scent of dry, dusty grass and the residual warmth of sunlight on the bark as they’d lain there, stretched out like cats, occasionally mumbling but mostly silent, enjoying the sunlight filtering through the leaves and the comfort of one another’s company. After that it had been too cold to come out here anymore.

But spring was here, and they had a rare day off from training, and although Marco had suggested it might be prudent to spend that time studying - like everyone else was - Jean had ignored his wisdom and brought them out here, to the meadow. Even from the low branches you could see for miles around; the towns spread out beyond the borders of the training grounds, the Wall in the distance, a shimmering rim of white on the far horizon.

“You first,” Marco said, eyeing the trunk a little doubtfully.

“C’mon. Both of us together. We’ll be fine.” Plummeting an unholy distance to the ground had not given Jean a complex about heights, as he’d thought it might. If anything he was more determined now, embarrassed at what he perceived to be a failure on his part: he’d panicked, he’d lost his head and he’d wasted weeks of training in the infirmary, twiddling his thumbs while pleasant-faced medics told him repeatedly how not-ready he was to get back to the field.

Jean gripped the trunk with both hands, planting one heel in a shallow divot. The bark was a little slippery but it wasn’t that much trickier. Slowly, cautiously, he progressed upwards, using the lowest branches to propel him further. He glanced down a couple of times, saw Marco making steady progress towards him. Marco’s brow was knotted in concentration, broad fingers grasping for the next handhold. They were out of practice, Jean thought, pushing himself up; the burn of thigh muscles and straining of his shoulders were almost alarming. Most of the trainees didn’t bother much with the physical stuff like climbing or running - they seemed to think the manoeuvre gear would do all the work for them, but Jean thought they were being naïve. What happened if your gear failed? It was all very well relying on that stuff but it was fallible, like everything else in the world – and to Jean, the mere idea of finding oneself out in the field and at the mercy of the Titans was a nightmare scenario.

They finally clambered up onto their usual branch, brushing leaf-litter and debris away as they settled, a little red-cheeked and breathless. The world had changed since they were last up here; the parched, yellowing grass and shimmering heat-haze had given way to a patchwork of green fields spilling out like a blanket, the distant rooftops of Trost district just beyond.

Marco was unpacking his knapsack. He’d brought lunch, two parcels wrapped with great care in squares of linen. Beneath those, a small stack of books. Jean gave a melodramatic sigh as he reclined against the trunk of the tree. “Really?” he said, eyeing Marco’s knapsack.

“Well, we do have an exam very soon,” Marco said, a little apologetically. “And it does count towards our final ranking, so…”

“I don’t see why we should have to have exams,” Jean said. “It’s not like knowing the approximate height of a Titan or the names of the Districts are going to make a difference, not in the long run.”

“Well, it’s about setting a precedent.” Marco stacked the books neatly on a flat part of the branch, placing both lunches on top. “How can we foster the confidence of the people if we’re not even aware of the circumstances that put us in charge? How can we defend them properly if we don’t know what we’re defending them against, or why it matters so much?”

“You don’t need to read books to figure that out,” Jean said, aware of the sneer in his voice, aware that it made him sound like a prize asshole.

Marco shrugged. “Maybe we do,” he said, swinging his legs over the edge. His feet dangled, unobstructed. “We’re still young, Jean. I know you’re smart, and astute, and you seem to have a very strong sense of how the world works, but you’re in the minority. Most of us…our parents hid an awful lot from us. Because they thought we were never really under threat, see? Until Shiganshina, the Titans were just bogeymen, something to scare us all into being good kids. But never anything substantial. We went about our lives and assumed this was how it had always been. How were we to know otherwise?” His chin rested upon his shoulder as he sat, peering over at where Jean had sprawled out. His palms were flat against the bark. “You have an uncommon knowledge,” Marco said. “I’m almost envious. Your parents must have thought it was important for you to know the truth from the beginning.”

Jean snorted. “My parents spun me the same comforting bullshit yours did.”

“Well, my point still stands. You’re smart, and a lot of the others are very naïve. Myself included, it would seem.” A short pause, just enough to be awkward – long enough for Jean to recall the stricken look in Marco’s eyes, the pulsing ache in his jaw. “I guess…look, I know it doesn’t matter much to you, since you’re shooting for the Survey Corps, but…it’s really important that I make the top 10. You know that. And if knowing these books inside out gives me an advantage, then I’m prepared to make that effort.”

“You haven’t changed your mind, huh?”

Marco smiled. It was tight-lipped, full of apology, and Jean felt guilt twist in his gut like a bunched fist. “You know I can’t,” he said, quietly, so that his voice was almost lost among the rustling leaves. He looked down at his feet, contemplative, or perhaps just seeking distance from Jean’s gaze. In the intervening months the wound between them had begun to heal, but there was still a rawness to the edges, a residual bruise that ached if either of them pressed too hard. Jean had hurt him – hurt them both, when he really thought about it - and he didn’t know how to make it better.

“Hey,” he said.

Marco looked up.

“Forget the books for a bit.” He shifted against the trunk, making room. “C’mere.”

For a long moment it looked as though Marco would just stay there, legs dangling off the branch, the distance between them unremarked upon but _there_ , sure as a rift in the earth. But then, wordlessly, he got up. The branch was barely wide enough to accommodate them both, but with a little imagination and a lot of wriggling they managed to configure their limbs in a fashion that suited them both. Tentative at first, as though unsure of one another, but growing bolder; the eventual solution saw Marco resting against the trunk, Jean’s back pressed lightly against Marco’s chest, the base of his skull resting in the concavity between Marco’s neck and shoulder. It felt good to be close again. It felt like a stitch pulled tight, closing further the fissure Jean had torn in their friendship, and the ache in his guts subsided a little.

And it felt safe. There was the truth of it. For months, Jean had been consumed by the notion that somehow, the distance between himself and Marco would inevitably lead to something terrible; a deep-seated anxiety clawing at him from the inside, an itch beneath the skin that wouldn’t abate. The nature of this _something_ was maddeningly out of reach, though it seemed to Jean that he’d once been certain of it; a dream, perhaps, a nightmare in which he’d lost Marco that had somehow burrowed into the fabric of his subconscious. Hadn’t that been why he’d asked Marco to join the Survey Corps with him? That same vague, nagging suspicion? How stupid, Jean thought ruefully. How goddamn _stupid_ of him.

“You don’t have to apologise for your ambitions,” Jean said. "And you don't have to study your brains out. You can do this." He swallowed hard. "You _will_ do this."

“I’d always hoped you’d come with me.” Marco’s voice seemed to float, disembodied, anchored only by the gentle reverberation of each word against Jean’s ribcage. “I don’t know why I thought that. I don’t suppose you ever gave me any indication that you intended to join. Just that one time, when Shadis asked you, and we were so young then I guess that doesn’t even count, does it?” He shifted his weight, and Jean shifted with him, feeling the press of Marco’s thighs against his own as he settled between them. “It just seemed right. You and me, protecting the King together. Maybe I was being fanciful, but it seemed like it was meant to be that way.”

(Something sparked in the distant reaches of Jean’s brain, some memory on the very periphery, fragmented and very far away. The beginnings of an itch deep in the flesh of his palms. He swallowed it down, cast his mind elsewhere.)

“Hey, you’d only be living in my shadow the whole time,” Jean said, stretching his legs out in front of him. The toes of his boots were beginning to wear away, the wriggle of his toes visible beneath the old leather. “This way you won’t end up being my sidekick.”

He felt a playful finger dig at his ribs. “I’m your sidekick, am I?”

“Of course.” The slow rise and fall of Marco’s chest felt like the ebb and flow of a gentle tide. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, warming Jean’s face. He closed his eyes, savouring the sensation. “I’m swift as an eagle, sharp as a knife and far too handsome to be anything but the hero. You should feel honoured, really.”

“Oh, I do.” He could hear the smile in Marco’s voice. “Apprenticed to the great Jean Kirschtein, who could never do anything as stupid as cracking his own skull open mid-rescue, and would _definitely_ never throw up all over his own shoes.”

(A stirring in the back of his mind, a nonsense-chorus, meaningless and strange and gone in a split-second: _timesick you were timesick don't you_ -)

“Oof. That was low.” He jabbed Marco in the stomach with a finger. Marco caught his hand, lacing their fingers tightly together. A surge of warmth rose in Jean, like the sun emerging from behind a cloud after a long time away. The calluses and indentations of Marco's palm were the same as he remembered, an intimate topography burned into the forefront of his brain, where all the important things resided: the way Marco's eyes crinkled when he laughed, his long-legged, straight-shouldered gait, the parting of his lips as he slept. He hadn’t changed. Things between them hadn’t changed, not really.

"Even if we do join different divisions, we don't necessarily have to be apart," Marco said, running his thumb across the uneven bridge of Jean's knuckles. "We'll get leave, won't we? And I'm sure there'll be plenty of times when we cross paths in our duties. And maybe when the first few years are over and we're fully inducted...maybe we can save enough to find a place to live?"

(Frantic chatter in his skull like a hedge full of birds, indistinct but urgent, and Jean knew he ought to _listen_ but none of it made sense, not a bit of it, and Marco was warm and perfect and right here.)

"You'll be living in Sina, remember?" Jean said. "I won't have dispensation to live there."

"Oh, that doesn't matter, I’ll come live with you. I'm sure it's really dull in Sina. Besides..." Marco's arms slipped down, forming a loose cradle around Jean's shoulders, hands clasped against Jean's sternum. "...Where would you be without your sidekick?"

Jean turned his head, resting his face against the flat plain of Marco's chest. He shut his eyes, felt himself start to drift. "Where would I be?" he murmured. He felt Marco's arms tighten around him, the bliss of warm sunshine and the susurration of new leaves and Marco, always Marco. Curled up together where nobody could find them. Away from the world, if only for a time. And as he dozed lightly, some faraway part of Jean wondered why it felt so wonderful to hear the slow beat of Marco's heart, steady and unrelenting in his chest.

“Whatever happens,” he said, “we’ll be happy. You and me. I’ll make sure of it.”

*

"God, this is SO boring!"

Sasha pulled a bowl from her tub of water, holding it at arm's length so the soapy water would drain out onto the grass. Jean looked up from the particularly tenacious crust of dried-on porridge he'd been scrubbing at. As the weather was so pleasant, Shadis had agreed that the trainees might undertake housekeeping duties outside wherever possible. It had been Reiner's idea to bring the laundry tubs out onto the grass, allowing them to enjoy the growing heat of the morning as they scrubbed breakfast utensils behind the mess hall. Sasha had kicked off her shoes, and her toes were half-buried in the damp grass.

"I didn't see you complaining when you were on your third bowl of porridge," Jean remarked.

"Mylius put _cinnamon_ in it," Sasha said reverently. She added the clean bowl to the tidy stack she was building, three towers in a triangle formation, like the spires of a castle. "Do you know how hard it is to get your hands on that stuff? Who knows what he did to get it!"

"Huh. I didn’t get any. How come he shared it with you?"

Sasha smiled, a little bashful. "He, ah, he has certain intentions," she said, suddenly developing a deep interest in the insides of the bowl she'd picked up.

Jean fished a spoon from the bottom of the tub. His fingers had begun to prune. The rest of the trainees were taking forest survival lessons from a man named Erd, purportedly of the Survey Corps. On reflection, he thought, rinsing the spoon in a pail of clean water by his feet, he'd much rather be listening to that lecture than fulfilling his cleanup obligations, but he'd check Marco's notes later on. "Oh, is that how it is?" he said, quirking an eyebrow in Sasha's direction.

She sat bolt upright, cheeks reddening in indignation. "It most certainly is _not_!" she said, dropping the bowl into the tub with such force that a small tidal wave of soapy water cascaded over the side. "It's just that cinnamon is very hard to come by, and if he's going to offer me some _even though_ I've told him several times that I have no interest in him whatsoever, well then...it's not my fault he thinks the way to my heart is through my stomach, right?"

"You're considering it a gesture of friendship," Jean offered, plucking another bowl from the tub.

"Exactly," Sasha said, waving a spoon at him for emphasis. "A friendly gesture. But only that."

"And how does Connie feel about these gestures?"

He'd never seen Sasha lost for words before. He hadn't thought it was possible, and yet there she was, mouth wide open and utterly soundless, face ablaze with what might have been embarrassment, or rage, or a combination of both. A peal of surprised laughter escaped Jean's lips; he clamped his hand over his mouth too late to stop Sasha lobbing the spoon at him.

"Hey," he said, trying desperately to keep a straight face and failing miserably. "I'm very discreet, you know that, Your secret's safe with me, Sash, I'd never make you choose between illicit cinnamon and your tiny paramour..."

"He is not my-" she stopped dead, eyes widening, and Jean pivoted slowly in his seat, fully expecting to feel the full force of Shadis's wrath the moment he looked up. At least he was holding a bowl, Jean reflected; maybe he'd be granted some kind of reprieve for at least looking as though he was working.

"I didn't hear a thing," Armin said, somewhat sheepishly. He raised a hand by way of greeting. "Um. Sorry to interrupt your spoon fight. I'll take over, Sasha, if you like."

"Can't you take over from me? My hands are ruined." Jean splayed his fingers, lifting them up to the light. The hot water had turned them an alarming shade of pink.

“Don’t even think about it, Jean. Consider this your punishment. Thank you, Armin." Sasha got up from her seat, offering Armin a brief and unexpected curtsey. She would do things like that sometimes, when she'd got it into her head that her bumpkin ways were showing through and that she ought to try harder to fit in. Never mind that the only other person who ever curtsied was Christa, and even that she reserved for authority figures.

“I won’t ask,” Armin said, watching her depart. He settled into her seat, retrieving the flung spoon from where it lay by Jean’s feet.

“There’s no great story to tell,” Jean replied. He rested his hands on his knees, leaned back in his seat; a vague ache had started up somewhere in the small of his back. “Unless you’re particularly interested in the Mylius Zeremusky method of charming girls.”

Armin’s mouth twitched in amusement. “I think I’ll pass,” he said.

“How’s survival training?”

“Well, I think the majority of the class have been scared out of so much as touching a mushroom ever again,” Armin said, examining the spoon for specks of dirt. His hair was growing out too, shaggier and stragglier than his usual tidy blonde halo. It suited him. Made him look less like the innocent Jean was increasingly certain he wasn’t. “And the remaining ten percent are willing to risk poisoning to experience the psychotropic effects Erd specifically warned us about. So if Thomas puts mushrooms in the casserole, I’d advise giving it a miss.”

“I don’t know. Could be fun.”

Armin looked him dead in the eye. “According to Erd, they can cause complete nervous breakdown.”

“Oh.”

Armin's expression was utterly deadpan as he returned to the task at hand. There was a kind of easy, understated assurance about Armin, developed slowly over the years and especially evident in Jean's company. There was a part of Jean that thought of Armin as shy, the kind of softly-spoken wallflower who hid their intellect behind wide eyes and closed lips. He wasn't sure why: Armin had always possessed a relaxed confidence, a quiet acceptance of the way the world was and his role within it. Perhaps he was getting mixed up, Jean thought. There'd been so many trainees come and go, their personalities and idiosyncracies merging in his memory until all he could recall was a composite.

"Jean," Armin said. "What made you come back?"

Jean shot him a quizzical look. "Back from where?"

"Back from before. Through the wall. I know about it, Jean. I've known about it for a long time."

"About what? Through the wall? What are you going on about?"

He felt the full weight of Armin's scrutiny upon him, an almost physical sensation which felt, for a moment, as real as the sun on his scalp and the itch of soap drying on his skin. It felt as though Armin could see through him. He looked down at the tub, at the scum of soap bubbles glimmering in the bright light, the grass wet and slick beneath, anything but Armin's wide, questioning eyes.

"Oh," Armin said, so quietly it was almost an exhalation. "You really don't remember, do you?"

Irritation prickled at the back of Jean's neck. "If this is some kind of prank, Armin, you can cut it out right now. I'm not playing." He almost hoped it _was_ a prank. He felt an uneasy stirring in his stomach, a kind of topsy-turvy dread, as though he knew, on some deep, instinctive level that bad news was coming. And there it was again, that chatter in the back of his head, the buzz inside his skull that sounded a little like words but couldn't be, not actual literal voices in his head. _Migraines_ , Jean told himself, shaking his head. _I've had a lot of migraines lately._

"How did you get here?" Armin asked, very carefully, the tone of someone approaching a dangerous animal. Did he think Jean was mad? Was that what this was all about? "How did you come to join the trainee corps?"

"I signed up, obviously," Jean said, with certainty. "I came to the recruitment centre the same morning they announced sign-ups. I..."

(The smell of Castile soap. Stiff-shouldered kids in droves, terrified, determined. Lieutenant Lorenz and his damned handwriting lessons.

Lieutenant Lorenz.

How could he have known about Lorenz?)

Armin said nothing. He seemed to watch quietly, studying the contortions of Jean’s face, the sudden rigidity of his shoulders as he sat upright, lips parted, the question stuck in his throat: _how could I have known?_ Perhaps he was getting muddled. Perhaps he was mixing up memories. But the more he thought back, the more certain he was: he had _known_ about Lieutenant Lorenz. He’d known before he’d even signed up. He cast his mind back, remembering the room, the dark polished wood and the nervous, twitching kids lined up, ready to sign their lives away. He remembered the clerk, sour-faced and resentful of his proximity to so much nervous teenage sweat. He remembered…

Oh shit.

A wave of helpless disorientation broke over Jean, flooding his synapses, turning his brain inside out; he sank bonelessly in his seat, toppling to the floor as if pushed by unseen hands, and Armin watched him fall, calm and unruffled, like he’d been expecting it the entire time. Like he’d _known_. Jean lay on the damp grass, limbs an untidy crush beneath his immobile form, staring up at Armin’s face as it swam in and out of focus – here, a young, frightened boy trembling at the cruelty of the world; now an older, wiser boy, shaggy-haired and unafraid. And somewhere in between a boy covered in blood, blue eyes like beacons staring out, seeing everything, knowing nothing, but he would know soon. He would know everything soon. And it seemed as though Armin was somehow all of those things at once, each facet existing simultaneously with the others, a boy of composites. Jean shut his eyes, sickened by the warping and changing of Armin’s face, the way the sky seemed to ripple behind him. Even the blackness behind his eyes seemed to pitch and roll, a storm-beset ship in the dead of night.

Armin’s voice came to him, soft, almost lost beneath the buzz of blood in his ears. “Try to remember.”

“I can’t.” He pressed his face into the grass, breathed in the scent of wet earth. “I can’t remember.”

“Why did you come back, Jean?”

“I…”

A burst of memories like buckshot, scattering into every corner of his conscious mind. _Timesick, you were timesick…_ The hole in the wall, mirror-shimmering anomaly, a portal to what had come before. Passing through, into the past, into _now_. The alien sensation of being twelve again, the awkwardness of new limbs, an old shell his mind had long outgrown. And Marco. Marco, young and hopeful, beautiful Marco, body intact, bones unbroken, skin unburnt. Smiling. And that smile shifting, skin melting, matter falling away until all that remained was the skull, fringed by old, torn flesh and the deathly leer of skeleton teeth, the pallor of Marco’s dead skin and the flutter of torn clothes in the breeze.

The smell of charred bones rose in Jean’s nostrils. He lurched up, dragged himself to his hands and knees.

“Marco,” he murmured, lips numb, throat tight. “He died.”

“I thought so,” Armin said.

Jean felt hands on his back, gently pulling him up. He allowed himself to be moved, eyes still tightly shut, trying to ignore the nausea boiling in his stomach. He felt Armin settle beside him, arm around his shoulders, holding him upright. He remembered his Armin, back in his own time. How timid he’d been. How unsure of the world and his place within it. “How did you know?” he said.

“It was the apples,” Armin replied.

“Of course,” Jean muttered. He felt his head roll back, a terrible weight inside his skull. “Of course it was.” He breathed deep, filling his lungs with air. Concentrated on the rhythm of his heart. “Tell me how. Of all the conclusions you might have come to. How did you know I’d come back?”

There was a long moment of silence, and in that time there was only the reassuringly sturdy drum of his heart and the whisper of Armin’s breath in his ear, anchoring him to this world, to this _when_. His trousers were damp with spilled water, his head gently swirling. He was here. He’d come here by choice. And somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten everything.

“Because you weren’t the only one,” Armin said, at last. “I came back too.”

*

He’d digested this new information, considered it, and it occurred to him that if anyone else were to figure out the secret of the portal in the wall it would have been Armin. Armin was smart enough to know something was amiss, and curious enough that he would’ve wanted to find out why. And he was brave enough to have gone ahead with it. Maybe not in the early days, sure, but after? Yes, if the stakes had been high enough he would’ve gone ahead. He would’ve gone back. Hell, he was braver than Jean. Smarter, too.

“I still don’t understand how you knew,” he’d said. He’d opened his eyes and the light had flooded in, too bright, the colours too brilliant. He’d squinted at Armin, and the other boy had chewed his lip, apparently ruminating the best way to explain how he’d put Jean and apples together and emerged with time travel.

“Not here,” Armin had said. “Not in the open like this.”

So here they were, then, in Armin’s secret nook – not so much a nook as am old shed, really, in which a small stack of books and a threadbare cushion indicated Armin’s occasional residence. Still woozy, Jean sat cross-legged on the floor. Armin elected to remain standing, pausing at intervals to glance over at the door. The room smelled like damp wood, and cold air, and very faintly of mould.

“I don’t know how to explain,” Armin said. His fingers were an anxious tangle. “Because there’s…Jean, there are things I don’t know how to tell you, things you really ought to discover for yourself. I don’t know everything about this.”

“That makes two of us,” Jean said, a little terse. The floorboards were hard beneath him. He could feel his feet going numb. “Tell me about the damn apples.”

“Okay.” He nodded, perhaps in affirmation to himself. “Okay. You see, the thing is…when you mentioned the bag of apples. I remember that happening. Or, to put it another way, I was present in the reality in which Bertholdt stole the apples. In which Franz told you that would be the prize. And so when you said that…”

“…you knew I’d been present there too.”

“Yes. Combined with the change in your personality – a _profound_ change, Jean, you’re barely the person I remember from our early training days – I realised you must have lived this life before. That’s how it works. We can only return to the same point in time, and we have to relive all of that to get to whatever moment it is we’re looking to change, or experience again...”

“Let me just stop you there.” A palm held flat. Armin allowed for it, indicating with a nod that he should continue. “You’re suggesting I must have been present in that same reality. The one where Bertholdt stole the apples. But that never happened to me, Armin. I never experienced that reality. It was bread in my time too. So how could I have known…” Jean stopped. Armin had suddenly gone very still, his eyes a fraction wider than they had been before. “What? What did I say?”

“You’ve forgotten everything, haven’t you?” His expression was impenetrable, but his voice was an amazed murmur.

Jean felt desperation clawing inside him, a horrible certainty that something, somewhere had gone very wrong. Panic bubbled up into his chest, expanding slowly. “Will you stop talking in code and just tell me?” he snapped.

“How many times have you come back?” Armin asked.

He was about to fire off a sharp retort – _that’s a stupid question, isn’t it obvious? -_ when the enormity of Armin’s words hit him, not with the great force he’d come to expect but a slow, crushing gravity, the pressure of a Titan’s fist squeezing at his ribcage. Quite calmly, he realised he couldn’t breathe.

“It’s so easy to forget,” Armin was saying. He sounded a long way away, an insubstantial voice carried in on the wind. “As far as I can tell your mind wants to align itself with the reality you inhabit. If you get too comfortable, you start to slip. And before you know it, you’ve forgotten. You assimilate almost completely with the new timeline, and your brain fills in the gaps, justifying your presence. Because we’re not supposed to be able do this. It shouldn’t _be_. And every time we come back, it gets harder and harder to keep all of those memories straight in our heads. You were there with the apples, and you were there with the bread. That’s at least two loops. That’s how come you remembered.”

Lungs like slabs of rock, unmoving, unresponsive. He couldn’t move. His mouth was open, and sound was emerging – strange, bubbling noises, tongue lolling useless behind his teeth, but no air. He thought his lips must be turning blue. One hand reached up, clawing weakly at his chest. Why the hell wasn’t Armin _helping_?

“You’ll be okay,” Armin said, from miles away. “You just have to remember. Think, Jean. Separate the timelines. How many times have you come back?”

He gave a useless gargle, throat like lead, chest still and hard and empty.

_How many times have I come back?_

_How many times did I try to save Marco?_

_How many times did I fail?_

His lungs seemed to burst, and with it came air, glorious and cold, filling his chest like a rush of icewater. He gasped, undignified; a string of drool spluttered from between his lips. And he saw everything. _Remembered_ everything.

Jean Kirschtein remembered the first, second, third time he’d found Marco dead, variations on a terrible theme, each scenario slightly different from the last. The first time: Marco’s body, dead for days and propped against the wall. He remembered the second time, when he’d arrived too late and watched from afar – too far – as Marco was lifted into the air, the idiot curiosity on the Titan’s face as it lowered Marco into its mouth, and Marco’s silence from start to finish, the paralysis of terror denying him even a final scream. And the third time. The worst time, calling out Marco’s name, begging him to _run_ , and Marco’s startled smile, that moment of distraction causing him to slip, to stumble, to skid off the roof, tiles crumbling beneath his feet, and Jean too late to stop him; Marco several floors below, legs broken, staring up at Jean with wide, terrified eyes as the Titans approached and Annie behind him, holding him back, telling him it was suicide, that he was out of gas and would get himself killed. And she’d been right. That had been the worst thing. She’d held him back and stopped him from getting himself killed, and she’d been right.

This was his third attempt.

By Jean’s calculation, that would make him almost twenty-four years old.

There was no swirling disorientation this time, no timesickness. Just a cold, numb sensation deep inside of him. The knowledge that he’d tried and failed twice before. That he’d probably fail this time too. The universe wanted its death-offering, and Jean didn’t know if he could stop it.

“It can’t be done, can it?” he said.

Armin’s mouth was a tight, grim line. He looked like he’d aged several years in five minutes. “I don’t know,” he said, a little sadly. “I really don’t know.”

Jean took this in. Swallowed it down. “How many times have you come back?” he asked.

“Four times,” Armin whispered.

“Did you ever forget?”

“No,” Armin said. “I wrote it down. I looked every day. I never forgot. Every time, things go differently. Every time it’s different. But ultimately our fates don’t change. I don’t know…I don’t even know if it’s possible, Jean. Maybe it is. Maybe we’re going about it all wrong. But…if it means that much to you…to us…then we have to try, don’t we?”

Jean’s eyes burned with tears. The years of desperation, of frustration, of trying and failing and living through that same, singular moment over and over, of feeling your heart shatter time and time again and _knowing_ that you might have changed it…god, what a mess. What a fucking mess. Jean curled into himself, resting his forehead on his knees. He suddenly felt very small and completely worthless.

“Why did _you_ come back?” Jean asked.

He heard Armin swallow, loud in the silence. “Well,” Armin said, thick-throated. Jean wondered if he was about to cry. He wondered if this Armin ever cried anymore. “If you succeed this time…maybe you’ll find out. And maybe if I succeed too…maybe you never will.”

“What makes you think I’m going to try again?” He couldn’t help it. The tears came, hot and angry, and he swiped at them with his sleeve, furious at their presence. He pressed his head against his knees, wound his fingers into his hair. The floor beneath him was hard and cold. It stank of rot, wet floorboards left untreated for too long. All of a sudden he hated this place. Hated this _when_. Hated that he’d forgotten. Hated even more that he’d remembered.

“Because you have to,” Armin said, with absolute certainty. “Because you’re going to finish what you started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: all things must end.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which all things must end, for better or for worse.
> 
> (Warnings for hints of suicide, violence and physical injury)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....here we are, then.
> 
> This chapter is for Amber, without whom I never would have found the strength to keep writing - I have never been so fortunate to have randomly met someone via Tumblr messaging, and she has been an amazing gift I did not deserve, but am so, so glad of. It is also for Gitta, who is a constant inspiration and never fails to make me smile.
> 
> This story has seen me at my best and at my worst. It has been a labour of love, and now it's over I almost feel bereft.
> 
> It's not over for you yet, though. On you go. Time for one more chapter.

_Við munum gera betur næst_

_Þetta er ágætis byrjun_

_*_

_We'll do better next time._

_This is an alright start._

 

 

Drunk on sorrow, head heavy upon sloping shoulders, he starts off for home.

There’s no blood on his clothing but he can smell it anyway; the inimitable sweetness of death, of flesh on the verge of rotting. The slick sensation of blood on his fingers, although his hands are clean. Technically, they’re clean.

By the time they’d finally found Marco’s body the blood in his veins had already turned to stone.

He can’t stop replaying it in his head. The way Marco had smiled, the way his expression froze as the roof beneath his feet began to crumble. In slow motion, now, the graceful arc of his body turning in an entirely uncontrolled but utterly perfect somersault, spinning in the air like a leaf as he’d fallen towards the ground. And the sound: even from high up on the roof, the distant splintering of bone intercut with Marco’s breathless, agonised cry. The Titans had heard. Could smell his panic, the marrow leaking from his shattered bones. He hadn’t seen them eat him. He’s not sure if this is a mercy or a copout, if they ought to have shared that last moment of suffering – a final connection, the last they’d ever make, at least in this reality.

It doesn’t have to end like this. But it does, every time, over and over.

He can still feel the chill of Marco’s dead skin beneath his fingers, though he’s scrubbed his hands innumerable times since then.

The way to the portal is etched into his brain now, scored into his grey matter. He doesn’t remember scaling the Wall, or trudging, weary and footsore, to the exact stretch of concrete beneath which the portal hides in plain sight. He only realises he’s there when he snaps back into himself – wind combing rough fingers through his hair, plucking at the hem of his jacket, staring blankly up into a dull grey sky. Birds wheel and soar beneath him, turning wild circles in the sky above Trost. He wonders what it would be like to fly, to fall, to feel the hand of gravity guiding him towards merciful oblivion. To never have felt, or loved, or lost.

He inches forward. Feels air beneath his toes. Wonders if it’d hurt, even for a second. Jean shuts his eyes. Feels the enormity of the world around him, this world, one of many; one capsule of possibilities sealed off in time, a snow globe in which people bleed and grieve and die, and Jean has already left one behind. Without him, do these worlds cease to be? Are there a string of realities left behind in which Marco Bodt’s bones lie, charred and anonymous?

Will he leave this one behind too?

Jean takes a step out into thin air.

And he falls.

The world sweeps by in a watercolour smear. It’s not his life that flashes before his eyes but Marco, eyes alive with laughter, beautiful Marco, and as he tumbles through empty air Jean thinks _I miss you. I never stop missing you._

The jolt, when it comes, is as violent as Jean had expected. The twang of wires stretched further than they ought to be and Jean dangling limply, unwilling to begin his ascent back up. The portal is above him somewhere, waiting; that small sliver of the past, a mocking little mirror taunting him with possibilities. _Maybe you’ll save him this time. Maybe you’ll make it to twenty years old. Maybe you’ll grow old together._

And maybe, Jean thinks, staring up at the shimmering gap in the wall, maybe I won’t. Maybe Marco will die at sixteen, just like he always has.

Maybe.

But maybe Jean can’t go home anymore. Maybe Jean doesn’t know how to do anything but this. Over and over again, living out this hellish loop until there is nothing left inside of him but ashes and anger.

The portal shimmers. He’s alone, and bone-tired, and all of this is futile. He walks away. He resolves never to try again. He is worth precisely nothing, can change nothing. He is a failure.

*

Weeks later, mired in the catatonia of grief, he finds the portal once more, only he forgets that he’s ever seen it before. It represents something magical: a second chance. A promise. An opportunity to make everything right.

And just like that, Jean Kirschtein slips back in time once more.

*

“Hey.”

Jean jerked sharply awake. His shock must have been plain, because Marco gave a little laugh as he settled beside him, cross-legged on his mattress. It wasn’t yet full dark; Jean’s internal clock seemed to have stayed in winter mode, and the slowly lengthening evenings were still a little alien to him. Still, the nights were yet to warm up any, and the heat of Marco’s body beside him was welcome.

“Did I wake you up?” Marco asked.

“No. Sorry,” Jean mumbled, pulling the blanket up to his chin. “I was miles away.”

He felt Marco poke him gently in the side. “Nope, you’re definitely sitting next to me.” Grinning at this tiniest of wisecracks, a smile so genuine and so infectious that Jean couldn’t help but smile back. I can never tell you the things I know, he thought, even as his lips turned upwards, even as Marco’s eyes lit up with the small joy of Jean’s fledgling happiness. You’ll never know what I know until it’s too late.

“If you had a chance to see the future,” Jean asked, “would you want to?”

Marco stretched out, cat-slow, the shift of his muscles evident even under his loose-fitting pyjamas. "Why would I?" he said. "The future's not even been written yet, Jean. Why spoil the surprise?" He lowered himself to the mattress, tugging the blanket up. With his head on the pillow his eyes were level with Jean's; he looked so earnest, so genuinely positive about his unwritten future - dreams of the Military Police, standing tall and proud before the King. Dreams of being eighteen, twenty-one, thirty. Dreams of growing old with Jean beside him while beyond Sina the Survey Corps died in their pursuit of knowledge, children with adult hearts staring Titans in the eye, doing their utmost not to flinch in the face of death. In Marco's version of the future he would never know that terror. He would never feel his bowels turn to icewater at the smell of a Titan's breath. He would live a good, noble life, die peacefully in his bed at eighty-one, and Jean would always be there with him.

In four months, Trost would fall. They would all learn the truth about fear, and pain, and loss. Their naivety would be shattered and never again would any of them dream of the safety behind Sina, the pleasant tedium of a life without risk. In four months, Marco would discover that the future was not only written, but indelible.

"Would you?" Marco asked.

Jean rolled over. Stared at the wall. He felt Marco's arms wind around him, pulling him close. The familiar contours of Marco's body pressed gently against Jean's back, knees tucked against knees; Marco's nose tickling the back of his neck, breath warm against his skin. It struck him just how much happier he'd been when he hadn't known. That brief, beautiful illusion, when Marco's heartbeat hadn't felt like the steady tick of a clock counting down the seconds.

He thought of Armin: _Every time it’s different. But ultimately our fates don’t change_. Was that it, then? Was fate a genuine concept, and were they forever at its mercy?

"Only if I had the power to change things," Jean said.

Marco's fingers wound around his own, drawing their hands up so that their palms rested just adjacent to Jean's heart. "There won't be anything to change," he said, voice low in Jean's ear. "Don't be afraid to be optimistic sometimes. We'll have each other, won't we? So we can take on anything." Ankles entwining, legs a loose, comfortable knot, their shared warmth intoxicating. "Just think of all the amazing things we'll do," Marco whispered, and Jean shut his eyes against the heat gathering just behind the lids, the tears threatening to spill over and with them the terrible secret burning on his tongue.

*

He wrote it down. A piece of paper stolen from Shadis' desk, ink-stamped with the official Training Corps logo: _Remember why you came back. He'll die after Trost. This is your third attempt. Don't screw it up._ His handwriting was a spidery scrawl, messy in his panic. He couldn't afford to forget. The only thing worse than failing to save Marco was to never have tried.

Jean searched high and low for a place to hide his note. Privacy was a scarce commodity; the remaining trainees lived a largely communal life, sharing under an informal and unwritten agreement that what was yours ought also to be mine - especially those trainees whose parents sent them care packages in the post every month. Which meant that any hiding place Jean might choose would be at the mercy of the other trainees.

There was one place, though. One thing still held sacred.

His stomach was sour with guilt as he prised the book from Marco's shelf, oxblood leather smooth beneath his fingers. The portrait peeked out from between the pages, and even as his gut roiled with the dishonesty of what he was doing, he felt a tremendous temptation to flick to it, to hold it in his hands and see for himself the family Marco had worked so hard for. To apologise, perhaps, for all the times he'd failed them. Instead, he flicked to the page Marco had read aloud, recalling as he did the words he'd spoken, so alien and so beautiful, tongue rolling over every 'r', elongating vowels until the mere act of speaking sounded like poetry; that breathless moment in which he realised how much of a mystery Marco still was to him. And here, tucked beside those lines, he hid the note. He would look here. Some small part of him would remember the book, and the poem within it, and he'd be seized with the urge to find it, to read it, although the words were as good as nonsense. Maybe he'd even tell Armin. He ought to be able to trust Armin; he knew, after all, not only the how but the why. If he did forget, he thought Armin would probably realise. He was frighteningly smart, perceptive to a degree Jean had never truly understood. How many times had Armin come back? He hadn't asked. It hadn't felt right, not with the bone-tired slump of Armin's shoulders, the harrowed depths of his eyes, hinting at horrors Jean could only imagine. He knew it had to be multiple times. There was a jaded young man inside that shell, a man exhausted and demoralised but determined, not yet ready to stop fighting. Maybe he never would stop. Maybe they'd both keep going until they crumbled into dust.

He wondered what Armin had come back to change.

It would be something to do with Eren, he was certain of it. Eren's hotheaded outbursts and blind idealism would get him into trouble. It had before, and hadn't it been Armin who'd pulled him out of it almost every time? Armin was the missing part of Eren, the brains to his heart, the thought to his action. Whatever Armin had come back to do, Jean was sure it involved changing Eren's fate. And if Armin thought he could do it...

Well, they had to have hope, didn't they? They had to believe, even when all the evidence pointed to their inevitable failure.

Jean closed the book, tracing minute cracks in the leather with his fingertips. When Marco died, they'd burned this book with him, and nobody had ever dared open it. It had seemed profane, somehow. Even touching it now seemed terribly disrespectful. He slipped it back onto the shelf, tiptoeing a little to reach.

The note would be safest here. He'd never seen Marco touch the book save for that day he'd read to Jean. He could only hope that his instinct would be right.

He hoped he'd remember where to look, if it ever came to that.

*

The months passed with terrifying speed. The day of their final written exam came around so fast Jean was barely prepared, and although he knew all the answers - had lived all the answers - he found himself poised over the exam paper with his eyes wide open, unable to make sense of the questions. It was only Sasha's glance from across the room - wide eyed, enthusiastic, shooting a thumbs-up beneath her desk - that eased the tightness in his chest and brought the exam questions back into focus. And when Connie passed out mid-exam he realised that the timeline had changed, albeit only a little. In Jean's original when, Connie had only thrown up over his exam paper.

It rained torrentially on the day they gathered to receive their exam results, as it had the time before, and the time before that, and the first time around. He knew before he saw them that Connie, Sasha and Samuel would arrive coated in wet, glistening clods of earth, having taken it upon themselves to have a ‘mudball fight’. The rich, peaty aroma filled the dining hall in their wake; the rhythmic trudge of wet boots on floorboards signalled the arrival of the rest of the trainees, damp and disheartened by the grim weather, nerves frayed. The written exam was thirty percent of the eventual grade, and they were all acutely aware just how competitive everything was now. Only ten of them would attain the coveted top spots, those which would open the doors to the security of a Military Police position. The rest of them would choose the Garrison, which meant that in the event of another Titan breach – a distant possibility, in their young, optimistic minds – they would be the metaphorical cannon fodder sent in to shut the threat down.

It occurred to Jean that he could tell them everything. Right here, in this hall, sat between a twitchy, nervous Marco and a glowering Annie. He could tell them, in detail, how everything would go down, and they would listen, raptly at first, their fascination quickly giving way to utter disbelief – how preposterous Jean’s version of events would sound! Their silence would quickly turn to jeers, proclamations that Jean Kirschtein was a lunatic, and in the end perhaps only Eren would still be listening, those wide, unblinking green eyes of his fixed intently on Jean’s face, hanging on his every word. Three loops ago Jean would’ve hated that; he’d have considered Eren’s interest a sure sign that he was going barking mad. Funny how things changed. Funny how reasonable Eren seemed now, with the gift of hindsight.

He could tell them. They would afford him the same slack-jawed amazement as a magician, and as the Colossal Titan rendered Trost a wasteland of rubble and dead bodies they would look upon the destruction and whisper Jean was right. Jean knew all along.

He could tell them. But they’d never believe him until it was too late.

Connie and Sasha sat opposite Jean, the white of their trousers splattered with mud like some strange camouflage pattern. In the calm quiet of the dining hall Connie was noticeably tense, fidgeting ceaselessly.

“Nervous?” Jean asked.

“Course he is,” Samuel said, laying a mock-friendly palm on Connie’s shoulder. “Didn’t you see him in the exam? All he did was write his own name and his brain went boom.”

“Shut up, that’s not even true.” Connie yanked his shoulder sharply from Samuel’s grasp, almost knocking Sasha over in the process. “It was Christa’s fault. She poisoned me with her cooking.”

The look Ymir shot him could have melted rock. Beside her, Christa offered an apologetic smile, cheeks colouring prettily. She was graceful even in her embarrassment, but Connie was right: Christa might have been largely perfect, but her inability to cook even the simplest of meals without destroying it lingered in the minds and guts of every recruit.

“Anyway,” Connie continued, brushing flakes of dried mud from his boots, “You should be more nervous than me. I stayed up all night for a week studying for this exam, and I didn’t see you look at your books once.”

“I didn’t have to,” Samuel replied. “Nobody did. We all know this stuff, Connie. You’re the only one here with rocks in your skull.”

“If these results are any indication, I would suggest your assessment is wildly incorrect.”

Shadis’ voice cut through the low-level hubbub. All heads turned to face him; all eyes were a fraction wider than they had been a moment before. “I’ve heard talk that the written exam is a waste of everyone’s time,” he said, striding to the front of the room. “And now it appears that only a fraction of you even bothered to study for it. I can hardly say I’m shocked. With a few notable exceptions, your exam papers might well have been written by five year olds.”

Marco - who had studied, being one of those diligent students whose grades were always good, if unremarkable – shot Jean a look of horror. Jean gave him a small, reassuring smile in return. He’d already told Marco they’d both get good grades, though he could hardly claim to know. Call it instinct, he’d said, clasping a hand on Marco’s shoulder, feeling the tension beneath the skin, the sheer physicality of Marco’s anxiety. Because this was everything to him, wasn’t it? He observed the twitch of muscles in Marco’s neck, the slow hitch of his throat as he swallowed. The Military Police was everything to him, the entirety of his young life building up towards the moment Shadis named the top ten graduates, and if his name wasn’t among them…Jean knew that Marco didn’t think he stood out, that he wasn’t exceptionally good at anything (and, Jean had interjected, since when had that been a bad thing? Look at Eren, he’d said. In terms of physical prowess and intelligence, Eren wasn’t a standout student, but he had passion on his side – the burning desire to do better, to be useful, to matter. What Marco had on his side was a quiet, dogged determination, and more importantly, the personality to inspire that same doggedness in those around him. Hell, hadn’t Jean crossed time itself to save him?)

“Since Springer has proven his ability to read,” Shadis continued, perhaps a tad sharper than was necessary, “I am leaving the grades in his capable hands. I hope most of you will recognise this as your incentive to work twice as hard in the physical exam – that is, if you harbour ambitions to do more than mop Garrison latrines.” His pale, flat eyes passed over the room. Jean swore he felt the temperature drop a couple of degrees. “You are dismissed.”

Almost immediately the recruits clamoured around Connie, who, having glanced at the grades before him had adopted the expression of a particularly pampered cat. Marco shot up from his seat, but Jean held him gently back; Marco’s quizzical expression might have been comical if not for the panic in his eyes.

“Relax,” Jean said, running his thumb across the small bones of Marco’s wrist. “You did well.”

“You don’t know that,” Marco said, but made no move to extricate himself from Jean’s grip. So they stood there, Jean’s hand gently clasping Marco’s, waiting for the scrum of trainees to thin out before approaching Connie. He was like a tiny king, proud and upright upon the bench with Sasha beaming at his side.

“Hey, Marco!” Connie waved the paper at him, and Jean felt Marco’s grip tighten. “Don’t look so terrified! You did great!”

“Better than great,” Sasha added, snatching the paper from Connie and dangling it just above his head. “You got the third highest grade out of everyone.”

“Tied third, actually,” Connie said. “You and Eren. So hey, you’re on par with the walking Titan encyclopaedia. Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, though.”

Marco’s sudden relaxation was almost total, as if someone had snipped all of the wires inside of him. His shoulders sagged in relief, mouth broadening into a smile. When he turned to Jean he was almost beaming. Joy radiated from him like sunlight, and Jean felt the warmth of his glow as though it were something physical; the kind of slow, languid warmth of hot springs on a chilly day, and he smiled too, bathed in Marco’s happiness, wishing it could always be this way, that he’d always smile this brightly. It was almost enough to silence that small, nagging selfishness inside of Jean, the part of him that had wanted Marco to fail so they might stay together.

“You came second, Jean,” Sasha said. “Armin was first. Not that anyone’s surprised, right?”

“Armin is eighty percent brain, and the rest fluid,” Ymir piped up from beside them. “He’s a total invertebrate. That means he has no backbone,” she told Connie, smiling indulgently, and when he flipped her a swift middle finger she burst out into musical laughter, the kind that belonged to someone vastly more jubilant than Ymir had ever seemed to be. Not for the first time, Jean found himself wondering who Ymir really was underneath those layers of spite and spikiness.

Marco nudged him with his shoulder. “You came second? That’s amazing! All that time you spent helping me study must’ve done you good too. I don’t feel so bad about it now.”

Jean wanted to tell him that he could’ve sat this exam standing on his head, that he could have recited the answers in his sleep and had deliberately answered a couple wrong so as not to stand out too much. He wanted to tell Marco that, in a couple of months, they would all think back to this exam and realise that the theory was no preparation at all for the reality. That Titans in textbooks were mere paper dolls. He squeezed Marco’s hand. “Everything I know, I learned from you,” he said.

Later, they sat on the edge of the field, watching Connie and Sasha alternate between running laps and wrestling; their delighted laughter and loud, colourful recriminations made for a surprisingly pleasant backdrop. There was a certain security about it; the sense that as long as the status quo held – Connie and Sasha playing like children, Marco beside him staring up at the darkening sky – perhaps everything really would be okay in the end.

“You know,” Marco said, after a few minutes of companionable silence. “For the first time, I really feel like I might actually make the top 10.”

Jean rolled a blade of grass between his fingers. “For the first time?”

“I mean…” Marco drew one leg up, resting his knee on his chin. “I always thought I could make it, if I worked hard enough. But I’ve never really been sure that I’d really be able to. It was always such a vague possibility, you know…will I be strong enough, fast enough, smart enough? Will my best be good enough? I was never certain, especially after seeing how good Bertholdt and Reiner and Mikasa are.” He didn’t say Jean’s name, but they both knew he was in that category too, if only by virtue of having had a great deal more practice than anyone else. “And, you know, I’m still not the best candidate out there, but I’ve worked hard and it’s paying off. And I’m proud of that.” He looked up. In the low light his eyes looked almost black. “I’m proud of us both,” he said, quieter this time. “And maybe if you score high enough…maybe if we both do…you could come with me. To the Military Police, I mean.”

The sun was a crimson smear on the horizon, a slit throat bleeding into indigo. High above them, the first stars cast an uncertain glow, pale and indistinct. He shifted, unsure of how to reply. The sweet smell of sun-baked grass filtered up. Connie and Sasha were silhouetted against the grass, the sinking sun bestowing a hazy red-gold corona to their darkened forms. From the edge of the field they looked like angels, their halos bloodstained. The thought almost made Jean laugh, though he could feel beneath that a certain bilious anger; they ought never know how it felt to be stained with another's blood. They ought to stay innocent forever.

"I'm not trying to make you," Marco said, sensing Jean's discomfort. "I want you to do what makes you happy."

Wasn't that all Marco ever wanted? Other people's happiness? Hadn't Marco spent the best part of his life looking out for people? Jean had never had any such compunctions. He'd gladly have torn Marco from the career he'd dreamed of his entire life if it meant they could always be together, and here was Marco, asserting with typical quiet confidence that Jean's happiness mattered more than his own selfish wants. That was why the world needed Marco. That was why Jean needed Marco. And that was why it seemed such a cruel and pointless joke that the universe had elected him the sacrificial lamb: not a boy who'd save humanity, or a boy who'd change history but someone unremarkable, someone whose sole impact on the world was to make people happy.

 _What makes me happy?_ Jean thought, squinting out at the last light of sunset drained from the horizon. _What makes me happy is the thought of you standing beside me after we save Trost. The look on your face when you learn Eren's secret. Your hand in mine. I'll feel the blood pulsing beneath your skin and in time the memory of your cold flesh and charred bones will fade til I can barely feel them at all. What makes me happy is you, always you, and I will never be happy until I stop the universe from taking you away. Because I love you, Marco. I've loved you for such a long time and if the future has no place for you then maybe it has no place for me either._

"Jean...?"

He tore up a clump of grass, let it scatter through his fingers. _I don't know if I can save you,_ he thought, not looking up, Marco's stare prickling at his skin. _I don't know, and it kills me. And I can't tell you. In two months you might be dead, and I can't even warn you because you'll think I'm insane._

No. He couldn't tell Marco any more than he could tell Eren he was a Titan shifter, or Annie that she would betray them all. It didn't matter that he would be proven right; the future was not supposed to be his to divine. He couldn't tell Marco he was going to die, but there were other things. Things that shouldn't remain secret, not between them. Not now. They'd always left it far too late.

He looked up. Marco sat upright, a frown etched in the set of his brow. He looked worried, wide-eyed and very beautiful.

"I don't care if you join the Military Police, the Survey Corps or the goddamn Agricultural Division," Jean said. "We'll make it work." He inhaled deeply, felt the words lodged in his lungs, waiting to become real, and he reminded himself that he had done this before. Memories of Marco's pleased, embarrassed smile, the tentative entwining of fingers, and the thought of that smile was enough. He thought he could draw it from memory now, he recalled it so vividly. "I love you," Jean said, frank as any admission he'd ever made, and it felt so good. "I don't know about you, but...even if you're in Sina and I'm out here, that'll be enough. I'll wait for you as long as I have to."

Marco's mouth opened as if to speak, but nothing emerged. The deep flush creeping up his neck was visible even in the dark. Jean was horribly aware of each individual heartbeat, of every exhalation, and just when it seemed the silence might go on forever, Marco finally smiled. Slow, at first, slow as honey, lips curled upwards, eyes alight, a perfect sunrise of a smile. Even though Jean had lived this moment time and time again his heart still leapt to see it, and here, he thought, here was a moment he'd come back over and over to experience if only he could.

(The first time - before the portal, before everything - the night their grades were announced, buoyed upon the adrenaline of success, their future together cemented, Marco's mouth against his so suddenly he hadn't had time to be surprised, and the breathless, jubilant grin when they'd pulled away at last, tasting one another's joy on their lips.)

"Do you mean that?" Marco asked, a little awed, though the softness of his voice and giddy smile told Jean he already knew.

"About the Agricultural Division?" Jean quirked a grin. "You'd be handy with a scythe."

Flustered, Marco almost choked on his own words. "No, you idiot..."

"I know," Jean interrupted, catching Marco's exasperated hand mid-fling. He brought it gently down to his lap. Their eyes met. His stomach seemed an insubstantial thing floating inside of him.  "And I do."

(The second time, high in the branches of the tree - their tree - half-asleep in the afternoon sunlight, a mumbled proclamation almost lost in the susurration of the leaves but heard, requited in a whisper to the ear, a kiss to the forehead. The easy slumber of new love, two people who are certain beyond all logic that no force in the world could put them asunder.)

"That's good," Marco said. His breath seemed to catch in his chest for a second. "Because I do too."

(The third time, the desperate fear of losing Marco like a grenade in his chest, pin precarious, not wanting to love him but unable to stop, not wanting to tell him but unable to hide it; Marco's sweet, sad eyes when Jean tried to push him away, and the urgency of their kisses when Jean finally let him in. The inevitability of love and the agony of knowing how soon it would shatter.)

And the fourth time. This time. Arms snaking around shoulders, drawing each to the other, lips parting against warm lips, and when Jean sighed against Marco's mouth he wasn't sure whether it was in joy, or sorrow, or a little of both.

*

The world didn't really change, but it felt like it had.

They kept training. Drills every morning, laps every afternoon, manoeuvre gear training interspersed apparently at random. And if they sat a little closer at mealtimes, well, nobody made a fuss about it.

They slept beside one another, sometimes waking to find the other wrapped loosely around them, strangely unwilling to extricate themselves even as the heat of the morning crept in. They didn't talk about the future, afraid to shatter the fragile bubble in which they seemed to reside now - this perfect moment in time, two brief sparks set alight and kept burning as if under glass. And although they would have to leave it - although that time was rapidly approaching - for now, it was enough. For now, those whispered declarations of love and stolen kisses and languid embraces were everything.

Together, they counted down the days to graduation.

Jean tried to pretend there was nothing else to count down to.

*

They sat together high in their tree; the day was warm, the shade blessedly welcome. The bridge of Jean's nose prickled with day-old sunburn, and he scratched absently at it, relishing the sting. Beside him, Marco rummaged in the backpack he'd brought up with them, searching for a snack.

Jean remembered this day. Remembered it so well he'd dreamed of it, though he hadn't understood it then. He'd been happy then, a pure, unconditional happiness, and on that first time around - before he knew what the future held, how much he truly stood to lose - he'd honestly believed that they could be this happy forever.

Maybe we still could be.

The thought was a necessary comfort. It was also a lie.

"The apples are good," Jean told him.

"How would you know?" Marco asked, glancing sidelong. "You haven't even tried one."

"Trust me."

He plucked an apple out of the bag. Bright red and unblemished. He lifted it to his mouth, raising his eyebrows. "All right," he said, "but if it's wormy, I'm making you eat the rest."

Jean shrugged, feigning nonchalance. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Marco took a bite, pretending he wasn't interested in the gleam of the juice on his lips or the motion of his throat as he swallowed. He remembered how this went. It was funny, he thought, tracking a droplet of juice as it ran down Marco's chin. He'd fought so hard to change everything, but this moment was always the same. He always made sure of it.

"Let me get that for you," Jean said, and the script was there in his head, unchanged over three loops. He moved as though choreographed, and it felt so natural: up onto his knees, gently cupping Marco's face in both hands. The surprised yelp as Jean licked Marco's chin, tasting the sweetness of the apple juice, the trajectory inevitably leading up to Marco's mouth. Teeth clamping around Marco's lower lip, sucking the juice clean, and the wicked glint in his eyes, knowing how gross he was being, knowing Marco would love it and hate it in equal measures. Every time, they played it this way, though Marco wouldn't know that.

The apple fell from Marco's hand, spinning wildly as it plummeted to the ground.

It suddenly occurred to Jean that something had gone very wrong.

"You're gross," Marco said, but Jean barely heard him. Still crouching, he clambered to the edge of the branch, peering down to where the apple had burst apart in the grass. And there, a pale speck in the distance but approaching fast, was Armin. The bearer of bad news, as he'd always been, following his script as faithfully as Jean had. Only this couldn't be right. It couldn't be.

In every other loop, all of this had happened on the afternoon of their graduation. But graduation was a few days away yet. Jean wanted to slap himself; how hadn't he realised? Had he been so focused on remembering his mission that the smaller details had eluded him? He'd known the exact path the juice would take as it trickled down Marco's chin, but had completely missed the significance of the date. Time dementia, he told himself, a little grimly. You have to be careful. Don't let happiness cloud your judgement.

"Hey, Jean?"

Jean looked up at Marco, still flushed and flustered but confused now, scooting across to join Jean on the edge of the branch. Armin burst through the long grass, emerging in the scrub beneath the tree, red-faced and gasping. He stared up at Jean, and even from this distance he could read the set of his mouth and furrow of his brow: I don't know what's happening either.

"Is everything okay?" Marco's hand on his shoulder was like a static shock, and it took all of his self control not to jerk back. He willed his muscles to relax, feigning an easy smile, though he could feel the strain, the paper-thinness of his mouth.

"What's up, Armin?" Jean called, aware of the tremor in his voice, praying that Marco wouldn't notice. It was too soon. He wasn't ready. Hadn't prepared. He realised then what a ridiculous thought that was, the idea that he might ever have been prepared. How could a person plan to subvert the will of fate?

"You have to come quick," Armin said, exactly as Jean had known he would. He was puffing but not bent double; he was fitter this time, stronger and faster. Like Jean, he'd taken each loop as a lesson, gleaned useful knowledge and applied it the next time around. How prepared was Armin? How well-formulated was his grand plan? "It's happened again. The Colossal Titan has breached the Wall. Trost has fallen, Jean. I’m so sorry."

"Oh no," Marco breathed, fingers tight against Jean's shoulder. Jean knew he was thinking of Jean’s family, his home. In previous loops, Jean hadn’t been worried; he’d known they were safe because everything was the same, down to the small details. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure. Anything could have changed.

(He tried not to focus on this. It meant nothing, he told himself, swallowing his apprehension. One small shift in time indicated nothing at all.)

"We've all been called to action,” Armin said. His face was a grim mask beneath his floppy hair, simultaneously cherubic and fiercely determined; the face of a boy who'd faced his greatest fear and emerged intact, but still knew the bitter taste of terror. "I hope you're ready."

"Yeah," Jean said, knowing he never would be. “Me too.”

*

When Shadis came before them there was no bright glint of mockery in his eye. The necessary sternness with which he kept them in line had dissipated, and with it the cocksure demeanour of every trainee in the room. Jean recalled himself at fifteen – truly fifteen, without the benefit of his extra years – the way he’d felt utterly deflated, as though his dreams and aspirations had been shredded before his eyes. The fear he’d felt, that first time, at losing his family. The sudden, brutal insecurity of life outside the Military police; he’d have to care about people other than himself, and that had frightened him beyond comprehension. Because when you cared about your comrades, you’d gladly put your life on the line to save them. That kind of unselfish altruism came naturally to Marco, but never to him. Jean’s aspirations at fifteen had never really exceeded ‘stay alive for as long as possible’.

“Think of this as your final test,” Shadis told them, tone flat, eyes dull. Taking in the crowd, slowly, as though he knew that this would be the last time he’d see them all alive and intact. “None of you are ready for this, but you’re going to have to be. You are responsible for the lives of everyone in Trost district, perhaps everyone behind Wall Rose. This is what you’ve all trained for, so make it count.”

Nobody knew what to say to that. Even Eren squirmed, visibly uncomfortable at the thought of confronting Titans, though to hear it told he'd gone after the Colossal Titan as though it were nothing more than a cockroach. Pure adrenalin had a way of negating reason; you didn't think, you just did, and only in the chill of the comedown - hands trembling, throat pulsating - did you realise just how big a risk you'd taken.

"You'll be split into squads," Shadis said. "You will each operate under the command of a Garrison soldier, but a leader will be appointed for every squad. Should you find yourselves without supervision, this individual's job will be to lead their squad in immediate withdrawal from the conflict zone. No heroics. Get up and get out. Is this clear?"

Stunned silence; the collective refusal to believe this was really happening. Some trainees exchanged nervous glances. Most stared at their feet. Jean was among the latter. The acrid scent of fear seemed to rise from them all in waves, toxic and pervasive.

"I said 'Is this clear'?"

"Yes, Sir," came the muted chorus.

"Good." Something strange passed over Shadis' face, a momentary flicker of what might have been despair. He’d seen Titans; he knew what strange circle of hell they were about to enter, the uncanny valley in which the enemy looked more than a little like you. "Those of you that manage to come back alive get to graduate. So come back alive, all of you." His eyes were caverns sunk deep into the thin flesh of his face, pale and grim, eyes that had seen things no man ought to have, and certainly no teenager. "The squads are as follows..."

Jean knew the squads by heart. He knew which of them came back alive, which of them would be found days later, ruined bodies propped up among the rubble. He knew they would run out of fuel, and that he would have to find it in himself to lead as many of them to safety as he could. He knew which of them would perish under his leadership. He saw their faces sometimes, in seemingly peaceful moments; he'd be walking down the corridor and Franz would suddenly appear before him, mouth a wide, terrified 'o', receding into darkness as Titan teeth sheared through his flesh. Or Sara, blonde hair matted with blood and brain and bright white fragments of skull, eyes wide open and lifeless. And he would stop, close his eyes and breathe, focusing on the rattle of each drawn-out, terrified exhalation, and when he opened his eyes they wouldn't be there anymore. He would whisper an apology into the ether and hope that it reached them somehow. I'm sorry. I should have done better.

"...Marco Bodt," Shadis said. "You will lead the seventh squad."

 _No, no,_ Jean thought, staring dumbly as Marco went to join squad seven. Christoph, Myliusz, Anke and Mina. _No, you were in squad nineteen, this isn't how it happens_. He stepped forward, ready to protest - _put me in squad seven, I'm begging you_. Armin's hand on his arm stopped him dead, brought him sharply back to reality.

"Let it be," Armin whispered.

"But I..."

"Let it be," he said, just loud enough to elicit a fierce glare from Shadis. Jean's heart was a frantic bass drum, his guts a tangled rope. When Armin spoke again his voice was almost lost beneath the static buzz of blood in Jean's ears. "It's a superficial change," he whispered, leaning up just a little, bringing himself parallel to Jean's shoulder. "Fluctuations in time. Minor details. Nothing here is significant. If you trust nothing else, trust me, okay?"

“You don’t know that! He could-“

“Kirschtein.” For a moment, Shadis almost sounded like his old, booming self. “Is there a problem?”

He felt the urgency of Armin’s stare hot on his neck, the presence of a hundred eyes upon him, awaiting his response. At the side of the room, Marco peered over. Jean felt himself reddening. He wanted to demand a place in Marco’s squad. I trust him to keep me alive, he’d say, staring Shadis in the eye. He’s smart and brave and strong, and he cares about his teammates. I trust him more than I trust myself. He’ll bring everyone back alive. And although all of that was true, it wasn’t the whole truth, and that was why Jean swallowed his protest and choked out a “No, sir.”

“Thought as much. Squad nine! Franz Kefka…”

“Everyone’s time is appointed,” Armin whispered, when Shadis’ attention was fully diverted once more. “I still don’t know if you can stop it, but you can’t bring it forward. Not unless you kill them yourself.”

A thought came, unbidden and terrible: Marco sleeping, a blade pressed against the soft underside of his throat, and Jean’s hand at the hilt, trembling. Would he do it, if it were the only way? If it meant he’d never have to suffer the indignity of a Titan’s teeth, the sheer horror of those last moments? Would Jean have it in him to spare Marco that end? The mere thought of it was enough to send a wash of bile up into Jean’s throat. Never, he thought, clenching his fists. It would never come to that.

“I hope you’re right,” Jean muttered.

“I am,” Armin replied. His pale eyes were serene, mouth turned slightly upwards, enigmatic; a tiny golden-haired godling atop his throne of secrets. Jean realised then that he was a little afraid of Armin. He also realised that believing him was his only real choice.

*

The hours that followed unfolded like a story read by somebody else, a tale in which Jean existed merely as a character. He watched himself spin through the air, running full-pelt across rooftops; his heart thundered like a piston but he felt strangely tranquil, as though the stale-sweat stench of Titan flesh and ruby droplets of blood splattered on the roof tiles had somehow osmosed from somewhere else, a long way from here.

He’d felt this same fear so many times it consumed him; he let it wash over him, a tsunami of adrenaline and blood buzzing loud in his ears. His mind withdrew, his body an automaton. It knew the steps to this particular dance; it knew when to dodge, when to dive, when to draw blades. It knew where to look to avoid the blood gouting from a friend’s severed limb, when to sidestep to avoid the viscera, slick and steaming in the midmorning sun. His body moved, and he let it. He had faith. He believed. He couldn’t take over if he wanted to; he was somewhere else now, floating in space, occupying a place in time where the cries of his comrades couldn’t reach his ears. His eyes saw, but he paid no heed to any of it.

 _It’s a flashback_ , some distant part of his mind insisted. Nothing more.

Funny, he thought, gazing out uncomprehendingly at the lumbering shape of a Titan a hundred metres away. A person might think that living the same trauma over and over would make it easier, somehow; the predictability of it all, every shattered skull and widening pool of blood in perfect synchronisation, anticipating that sick sense of horror before it even arrived. It didn’t. The taste in his mouth was still bile-sour, his muscles still rigid beneath the skin.

He wondered how Armin felt.

Somewhere not so far away, he knew Armin would be following his own version of the script. He’d heard the story before, the first time around: Armin, alone and terrified and convinced of his own dispensability, frozen in terror as a Titan’s teeth slowly descended. And Eren’s insane courage, sacrificing himself so that Armin might live. Would Armin still feel that old fear? Would the assurance of his survival mute the experience, or would he still tremble to feel the heat of the Titan’s breath on his face?

What would happen, Jean wondered, if they refused to play their respective parts? What if Armin decided he’d cowered in the wet maw of a Titan one too many times? How would Eren have discovered his latent powers, if not for Armin’s near-demise? Perhaps the universe would demand order, as it had with Marco over and over. They could refuse. They had that power. But the consequences were unknown, and with that came possibilities. Infinite possibilities, good, bad and downright catastrophic. For Jean, that responsibility was far too great. Better the devil you knew; having come so far only to lose Marco in a hitherto unforeseen way just wasn’t an option, not this late in the game.

So he played his part, dislocated from it all, because it was safer that way. At least he knew what was coming. Now he just had to figure out how to stop it.

*

It came to him later, when they’d made it across the rooftops to the supply depot. He and Marco sat side by side, refilling their gas canisters. He’d heard this speech before too. He’d committed it to memory the first time he’d heard it. After Marco died, he’d replayed it to himself time and time again. It wasn’t so much what Marco had said (though it meant something, it meant everything that Marco believed so strongly in him.) It was the only memory he had in which he could hear Marco’s voice clearly, and if he concentrated hard enough – shut his eyes, held his breath and listened hard – he could almost pretend Marco was still there with him.

In the gloom of the supply depot Marco's eyes were heavily shadowed, the bones of him outlined in black, like he'd been carved out of sandstone. The solidity of him, the sheer substance was reassuring; surely someone so evidently present in the world could never truly be removed? And yet his voice was soft, quiet even in the cavernous expanse of the depot, betraying the vulnerability at his core. Because Marco was strong but he was also young, and afraid, and utterly uncertain of so much in life, and though Jean had lived several lives and could claim years beyond Marco's own, he was no less afraid or uncertain.

"You know how it feels to be weak," Marco told him, speaking gently, acutely aware of Jean's volatile temper. "That's what makes you a good leader."

 _Oh yes_ , Jean thought, unable to contain the bitterness flooding through him, souring his throat. _Such a good leader that I let you die, and I didn't even realise. You were dead two days before I even noticed you weren't around. I was supposed to protect you and you died alone. That's the kind of leader I am, Marco. It's blind luck I didn't get you killed sooner._

"You have no idea how weak I can be," Jean said, and suddenly it hurt too much to look at him. His faith in Jean was absolute. He had no idea how misplaced it was. Jean's leadership would kill him, and here he was, championing him like he was the next Erwin Smith. Like he was competent.

Every attempt to save Marco had ended in failure. Every attempt had seen their paths cross out there in Trost, where danger stood tall as any building and moved with surprising stealth, reaching up with great, cumbersome hands to pluck the unwary from midair.

The answer, Jean thought later, as he lay beside Marco in the uneasy silence of midnight, was that Marco had to keep away from him.

He lay perfectly still as he considered this, not wanting to wake Marco. Half of the trainees had immediately fallen into an exhausted stupor the moment they'd crawled into their beds. The other half lay tense and awake, replaying slaughterhouse scenes in the black space behind their closed eyelids. The occasional low, shuddering sob broke the silence, but was quickly choked back. They had to be strong. Tomorrow, they'd have to do it all again. It was a hard ask, expecting these kids to put their faith in one of those abominations, and no amount of explaining Eren’s nature could truly quell their uncertainty. They whispered questions nobody but Jean truly knew how to answer: can we trust him? Will he lose control? Will he kill us all? Not even Marco could profess total confidence, though his faith in Eren-as-human had proven instrumental in his acceptance of Eren-as-Titan. He was as confident as any of them could be.

And why shouldn’t he be? Eren would be a long way away when Marco died tomorrow.

The more Jean considered it, the more obvious it seemed. The one constant feature in all of Marco’s deaths had been him – even that first time, when Marco had risked his own skin to save Jean’s, and the hysteria bubbling up inside of him upon realising that Marco’s ruined body had been discarded only a few streets away from where he’d found himself grounded. He rolled this truth around in his brain a while, feeling the sharp edges of it, the sheer weight of his own responsibility. Marco had paid too much heed to Jean’s safety, and to Jean’s command, and Marco had died.

It was a desperate conclusion, but he had nothing else to go on.

Sleep came in ragged bursts. No smooth transition from dream to reality but a terrible wrenching, as though by some huge, unseen hand; the sweat-sheen of fever and palpitations of nightmare with neither in evidence. Jean’s body rejected sleep as it would a foreign body, sensing the damage it might do; his brain fought unconsciousness with the dogged determination of an antibody. Beside him, Marco slept the dreamless slumber of the dead, limbs heavy, body utterly still. Good. He would need his wits about him. He would need to be as brave and as smart as Jean knew he could be. And he would need to be all of those things by himself.

That was where Jean and certainty parted ways.

*

The sun rose over Trost, a stuttering ascent witnessed by a small legion of men and women, of boys and girls; it painted the clouds in shades of viscera: the soft rose of lung tissue, now the deep crimson of arterial matter and, for a moment, the marbled blue-pink of spilled intestines. And as they took their orders – adults and children and all those inbetween, those like Jean, whose own metamorphosis had been violently forced and therefore fragmented – the sun’s warmth failed utterly to warm that cold, vacant space inside of them.

Before that – before the flat tone of the bugle tore them all rudely from whatever scant slumber they’d managed – he’d lain there awake in the blue, shifting pre-dawn light, watching the shadows paint Marco’s face, and registered for the first time that hardness in his heart. Years of scar tissue had built up around that delicate organ like a shell, solid and unyielding. And inside, beneath layers of grief and hurt and anger, that small space which Marco occupied, had never stopped occupying. There was no room for anyone else in there; to allow that space to expand would be to shatter his heart entirely, for if the loss of one hurt so terribly, the loss of many would surely destroy him.

And as to Marco – as to the loss of him all over again – would another layer of scar tissue finally prove too much pressure for his atrophied heart? Was it such a fanciful notion that he might collapse beside Marco’s body, unable to move or breathe as shards of stone-edged heart punctured his lungs?

He’d lain there beside Marco and thought about death, and when the bugle had sounded Marco had sat up, bleary and rumpled but lovely, and Jean had stayed there, staring with glassy eyes at the wall beyond Marco, willing time to stop entirely.

The sun, at last, completed its agonising crawl and breached the horizon with the bloody immediacy of birth.

“You have to go in there without me,” Jean said.

He heard Marco shift on the spot. “What?”

“I mean it.” He tried to sound hard; a verbal push casting Marco adrift, on his own, out of Jean’s destructive gravitational pull. His fists clenched, nails slicing into his palms. “Once we’re over the wall, you’re on your own. We both are.”

“I know that, Jean. I wasn’t planning on clinging to your leg the entire time.” His humour was flat; beneath it, Jean caught traces of his apprehension, his sudden hurt. He hated himself then. “We watch out for each other. We all do. If you’re asking me not to do that…”

He curled his fists tighter. “I’m telling you not to.”

“What’s got into you all of a sudden?” There was no anger in Marco’s voice; just placid curiosity, concern, the tone of someone who knew him too well. Anger would’ve been better. Easier. “Yesterday, you led an entire group of us to safety…”

“…and look how many others died on the way.”

“But we didn’t.” Emphatic, now, and Jean knew that if he could bring himself to look up at Marco he’d see that impassioned spark in his eyes. “You have to ask yourself, Jean. If you hadn’t led us, how many more of us might’ve died? We were all terrified and directionless. If you hadn’t have acted when you did…” Marco trailed off, perhaps struck by sudden superstition; they might have narrowly escaped a Titan feeding frenzy but that didn’t preclude the possibility of another.

Jean felt Marco’s hand envelop his. Still, he didn’t look up.

“You’re the reason I’m still alive,” Marco said.

“I can’t do that again,” Jean said. “I can’t lead you. I can’t lead anyone. It was a fluke. I got lucky. And don’t…don’t try to talk me out of this, Marco, because I know you will and I don’t need one of your pep talks, okay? Save your breath. Save your energy for when we cross the wall. Yesterday we had ignorance on our side. Today, we know everything. So just listen to me. You will be safer if you’re only focusing on saving your own skin. That’s all we need to do. Just survive until Eren does what he needs to do. And you can do that better if you’re not looking over your shoulder all the time. You can’t worry about me today, Marco, you understand?” There was no air left inside of him. He sucked in a noisy breath, felt it chill his lungs. His ribs ached. “Just…please. Please stay away from me.”

Marco laughed. A low chuckle, nervous but genuine. And Jean was too weary to be angry, too frayed to yell. “I’m not looking over my shoulder, Jean. Not because I’m worried about you. I’m following your lead.” A squeeze of the hand, firm despite trembling fingers. Jean imagined those hands cold and stiff with rigor mortis, realised it wasn’t imagination at all but a memory several times over. Nausea burned in his throat. “I know that you’ll keep me safe, Jean. I trust your judgement. I stick with you because you make the right decisions.”

“My judgement,” Jean said, teeth clenched, “will get you killed.”

“It hasn’t so far,” Marco said, unperturbed. “You have amazing insight and instinct. Better than almost anybody else. I used to think it was a little unnatural, but it’s just you, isn’t it? I think maybe you were made for this world. But more than that…” An audible click as the words caught in his throat. “I know that you care about me. I’m not going to die while you’re with me, Jean. If you don’t trust yourself, will you at least trust me?”

Jean said nothing. His jaw felt as though it had fused shut, and inside was a Pandora’s box of things he couldn’t reveal. His stomach churned like a cauldron, a potent mix of frustration and fear and anger and sorrow, so much sorrow that he could scarcely believe there was room for anything else inside of him.

“Will you at least look at me?” Marco asked.

He did. There was such hope in Marco’s smile, a genuine, unquestioning belief in Jean and all that Marco believed he could do, and he realised he would never convince Marco to go alone. Jean had never felt so tired than in that moment. His bones seemed made of brittle chalk, his muscles lax; he felt used up, like the universe had drunk him dry and left only his shell behind. He didn’t have the energy to fight Titans. He didn’t even have the energy to stand.

When he collapsed to his knees, Marco was beside him in an instant. Hands on his shoulders, pulling him up, gathering him in a tight embrace; Jean’s face pressed against Marco’s shoulder, eyes hot with tears he dare not shed. And Marco’s voice in his ear, a low murmur: “I love you. We’re going to be okay.”

And then the bugle sounded, and it was time to go.

*

In the chaos, they lost each other.

It wasn’t intentional. These things happened; squads split apart like seedlings on the wind, whirling across the rooftops in search of safety. Threats were numerous and scattered. There was no pattern to the wandering of the Titans save for the presence of warm flesh, and a concentration of cadets drew them in numbers, stumbling on huge, clumsy feet towards them. In a bid to be clear of them, Jean went one way and Marco another, and that was all.

When Jean realised Marco was absent, he felt a strange relief. Perhaps he’d heeded Jean’s warning after all. And hadn’t he determined that Marco’s best chance was somewhere far away from him? He stood on his toes, scanning the horizon for a sign of him. In the near distance, Connie and Annie danced in the air above a Titan’s head, luring it away from an apparently injured Sasha. Across the rooftops, Malgorzata and Ymir crouched in the shelter of a chimney stack. There was no obvious sign of Marco.

Somewhere close by, a woman was screaming.

A cold weigh settled in Jean’s chest. The rooftop he’d landed upon was west from the point they’d last seen one another. Marco had gone east. He squinted out into the bright sky, searching that horizon for the whipcrack motion of his fellow cadets. It was discomfortingly still.

I’m being paranoid. Marco had probably moved on. He might have turned around, headed south, where there was a greater concentration of cadets luring Titans to the wall margins. He might have gone in search of Jean; there was safety in numbers, they both knew that. There were a hundred reasons why Marco was not in his field of vision, most of them perfectly sensible.

And yet.

Perhaps it was instinct that saw him get to his feet, first walking and then running, sprinting, heart beating fit to burst as he retraced his steps. His feet left the rooftops; he half-ran, half-flew, spanning the gaps between the houses with effortless speed. Still, no sign of Marco. No sign of anyone, though the lumpen silhouettes of slow-moving Titans revealed themselves the further he progressed. His head whipped frantically, searching the ground for signs of grounded cadets. A set of discarded blades glimmered here in the sunlight; over there, a single boot draped over the guttering. They could belong to anyone, Jean told himself. They could be relics from the previous day, the last traces of some lost, forgotten trainee. Anxiety clawed up into his throat, crawled beneath his skin; his breath came in great, whooping gasps, and he knew he was driving himself towards collapse but he couldn't stop, not until he found Marco.

 _I was wrong_ , he thought, swinging a wide arc around the cobbled piazza far below _. I've been wrong every time_.

If the universe wanted its death offering, it would reach out with both hands and take it.

A flurry of motion beside him froze his heart mid-beat; he fumbled for his blades, his canisters, ready to retreat but when he turned he saw only cold blue eyes, hatchet-sharp features. She landed beside him with effortless grace; he stopped, registering the burn of his breathless lungs, momentarily disarmed by the chill ferocity of her gaze.

"Keep this up and you'll get yourself killed," Annie said. "You’re acting irrationally."

"Have you seen Marco?" The words were barely a splutter.

Annie raised an eyebrow. "I thought he was with you."

"Does he look like he's with me?" Jean gestured to the empty rooftop with a frustrated swipe of his hand. "I lost him. I don't know how. We got separated..." he turned, feet clumsy, head giddy "...somewhere around here. I don't know where he went. South, I think, I didn't see him..."

"Jean, calm down." She wasn't a soothing presence, not with those mortuary slab eyes and thin, dour mouth, but she was sobering. "I'm sure he's fine. Probably joined up with another squad."

"I have to find him." Jean made to launch off but Annie's bunched fist tangled in his collar, bringing him sharply back down to earth.

"We have orders," she said, calm but firm.

"He's going to die, Annie." Jean wrenched himself from her grip, stumbled back a few steps. His legs felt dangerously loose beneath him. "I can't explain how I know, but I know. Please, let me go."

She stared at him for a long moment, and the look in her eyes might have been pity, or disgust, or something else entirely. Envy, perhaps; did Annie know how it felt to be principal in someone's heart? Had she ever really had a friend?

"I'll come with you," she said, at last.

From behind them came the sound of glass shattering. Someone cried out. And though it might have been anyone, Jean knew. He felt it deep inside of himself, the stopping of some internal clock, the chime inside his skull - this is it, this is the moment.

He didn't wait to see if Annie would follow. He ran. He shot his hooks into a nearby chimney stack, feeling the resistance of the wire as he leapt from the roof. Cold wind sluiced through his hair. Beneath him crouched a Titan; an endless, arcing expanse of spine and mottled flesh, and beneath that, barely visible from Jean's vantage point, was Marco.

Jean skidded to a halt on the edge of the roof. He drew both blades. His hands were slick with sweat.

"Look," Annie said.

Behind them, lured by the irresistible sound of Marco's scream, came another Titan. Jean froze. He could take one down, have Annie scoop Marco up and carry him to safety. He couldn't take two. Heavy footsteps reverberated through him, making his bones rattle; there were more coming. They’d be surrounded soon enough. They had to do something. Anything.

“How did you know?” Annie asked.

“Never mind that,” Jean said, swinging his legs over the guttering. The tiles were wet with last night’s rain. “I’m going to lure them away. You need to save Marco.”

Her eyes widened. “They’ll kill you.”

“They’ll have to catch me first.”

“Jean, stop. You’re not thinking properly. You’re not…Jean!”

Jean fired his hooks. They found purchase in the soft matter of the Titan’s cheek. The creature reared up as Jean leapt off the edge of the building, plummeting at speed towards the Titan’s face. Great red welts adorned its cheek; the hooks sheared smoothly through flesh, barely holding position. It raised one huge, ponderous hand, pinching at the wires with thick fingers. Jean felt his body pitch in midair, course irretrievably altered; suddenly there was a window before him, approaching at great speed, and he instinctively curled small, awaiting the impact. It never came. The Titan yanked hard at the wires, eyes huge and vacant, barely aware of the significance of its actions. Jean was pulled backwards, sideways, upside down. The air left his lungs in one violent burst. One blade slipped from his hand, spiralling through the air to the ground below. He thumped frantically at his gas canister but it wasn’t enough; the Titan’s grip was too powerful.

Above him, a black, stinking expanse of mouth opened up like a rift in the sky. He saw, inverted, the great dull rocks of the creature’s teeth, protruding from pale gums like gravestones. The wet pink tunnel of its throat. He was not ready yet. It wasn’t time.

Jean raised his one remaining blade and sliced through his own wires.

He heard Annie yell as he slipped from the Titan’s grasp, tumbling downwards; not the safe, controlled dive of manoeuvre gear but wild, the full force of gravity impressing its weight upon him. He squeezed his eyes shut. He was falling from the Wall, past the portal, rejecting every offer time had ever made him. It couldn’t be done, he thought, feeling his body spiralling. The portal was a broken promise, a shortcut to madness. He couldn’t save Marco. He couldn’t even fight a Titan alone.

The ground rushed up to meet him, and his bones answered.

*

Jean had always thought that he would die quickly, without ceremony. He wasn’t sure why; it was an instinct he’d always had. Prolonged suffering didn’t suit him. He would be gone in a flash, here one minute and dead the next, thank you very much and goodbye. Down the throat of a Titan, perhaps, or slit jaw to jaw, his lifeblood gushing down his chest in a vermilion torrent.

He lay broken on the cobbles, pondering this ignominy. Marco was somewhere in this piazza; Jean thought he could hear him calling out, though the whitewater rush of blood in his ears and the sick throb of his brain against his skull made it impossible to be certain. Above him, both Titans peered down with idiot curiosity, intrigued by this creature, which smelled like fresh blood and warmth and sustenance but did not move, did not speak, did not even cower. At least, Jean thought, as they crouched before him, their great bodies eclipsing the blue sky behind them, at least they weren’t focusing on Marco any more.

He spat. A tooth rolled out, buoyed up on blood-laced spittle.

A hand closed around him, scooping his limp body from the cobbles. For a strange, dizzying moment he felt whole again; his shattered ribs ground like broken glass and his legs seemed wrapped in barbed wire but the tightness of the Titan’s grip brought all of his parts together, all his dislocations and fractures, squeezing his body back into an approximation of himself. And it was warm. Warmer than he’d thought, the ambient heat of a summer’s day seeping in through lacerated skin. Like a hot bath. Yes, he thought dreamily, ascending with slow grace, this is nice.

“For god’s sake, Jean, wake up!”

A familiar voice stole into his daydream. He blinked bleary eyes, gazed up through his sweat-matted hair at the shape crouched on the opposite roof.

_Everyone’s time is appointed._

Jean didn’t known when his appointed moment of expiration was, but he knew it wasn’t today.

He turned his head, slowly, fighting vertigo. Three Titans now, attention waning, scanning the horizon for signs of a fresh meal. Armin and Annie on the roof, blades drawn, waiting for the right moment to strike. And Marco, somewhere below him, perhaps calling his name. Perhaps silent. Perhaps already dead.

If he could just draw their attention one more time…

His arm dangled limply from the Titan’s fist, blade still caught in the cage of his fingers. It took all his effort to raise his arm, gritting broken teeth against the fire in his joints, the grind of bone stub against bone stub. The Titan’s fist paused in its ascent. For a brief moment, Jean was perfectly level with its eye. He saw himself in the black of the Titan’s pupil, hair clotted with blood, head lolling. Marco’s last hope. He let out a bark of laughter, turning quickly into a thick, liquid cough. Some hope he turned out to be, he thought, raising his trembling arm.

The blade slid into the Titan’s eye in one smooth motion.

The creature jerked suddenly backwards, crashing into its companions. In the eleven seconds it took them to recover Annie and Armin shot off like twin rockets, crisscrossing in midair, each zeroing in on their target. Jean didn’t even see Annie hit her target, so swift was her passage. Armin hit out with both blades, finding purchase but not deep enough; steam billowed from the wound, sending him stumbling, but he was fast, and Annie was watching. Their interchange was seamless. Annie crashed down, sleek as a preybird and deadly. Armin was gone long before the Titan fell.

And so to Jean. The Titan convulsing above him, grip loosening but still intact, flailing at its injured eye with its other hand. Briefly, it had forgotten its meal, but the ascent began anew, one eye skewered and unseeing, the other all too aware. Armin and Annie were otherwise occupied, and Jean’s strength was spent, his blade lodged and useless in the Titan’s eye. He felt the heat of its breath and the ache of his bones, the crushing disappointment in having come so far and fallen at the very last hurdle. He’d never get to try again. And who would come back to restore him? He’d made precious few friends, fewer still in this continuity, so singularly focused on Marco as he’d been. Who’d hold his charred bones in their palm and weep for him?

 _Marco,_ he thought, allowing his heavy eyelids to slip shut. _I messed up so many times._

He didn’t see Annie land on the Titan’s shoulder. He didn’t hear her. He only felt the world turning sideways, the sensation of wind in his hair as the Titan fell, fingers loosening at last. He felt someone halt his freefall, thin arms winding around his shattered body, carrying him away. The smell of Castile soap and starched uniform, a world away from the rotten sweetness of the Titan’s mouth. Wet tiles beneath him, solid and comforting, and a hand against his face, gently tapping.

“Come on, Jean.”

He opened his eyes. There was too much colour. His head felt full of hornets, buzzing angrily between his ears. Armin sat beside him, the white of his shirt smeared rust red. He was shaking.

“Never gets easier,” Jean said. His voice was slurred, tongue thick.

“No,” Armin said.

Jean felt the flutter of light feet on the tiles. He looked beyond Armin, squinting in the brightness. Annie, holding something in her arms. She lowered it to the rooftop, struggling a little with the weight. Her breath came in short gasps, her forehead glistening with sweat. She looked over at Jean and their eyes met. She was grave, solemn. Marco lay at her feet, eyes closed, nose bloody. Jean couldn’t see if he was breathing. He wrenched himself up, struggling, hating himself for his weakness as he forced himself to his knees, limbs collapsing beneath his own weight.

“Jean.” Armin placed both hands gently on Jean’s shoulders, holding him back. “You’re badly hurt.”

“I need to see him.” He swallowed. It tasted like iron.

“You need to lie down until help comes.”

“Armin…”

“Stop it, Jean. Just stop.” He sounded beyond tired, a bone-deep, existential exhaustion. It was instantly familiar. A wave of guilt passed through him. He let Armin gently lower him back down, felt the delicious chill of the terracotta tiles against his hot skin. He could sleep here, he thought. Just for a little while.

“Is he dead?”

Armin swallowed audibly. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think he’s breathing.”

It would have to do. He couldn’t do anything more if he tried. A greyness was encroaching, enveloping his brain in thick fog, dousing his pain. He acquiesced, let it slowly swallow him whole.

“Armin,” he mumbled. “Why did you come back?”

He felt a hand on his shoulder, small fingers, slender; the hands that had saved him, still quivering.

“I got to see the ocean,” Armin said, after a short while. “But Eren never did.”

Jean tried to tell him he understood, but his voice was stolen by the grey tide, snatched from his open mouth, and he let it go. The grey enveloped him, soothing his aching bones, bathing him in liquid warmth. He closed his eyes, breathed it in. Let himself drown.

*

In his dream, he saw Marco sitting beside him. His right eye was wadded with thick bandages, a pillow of gauze cushioning the socket. His hair had grown longer; it hung about his ears, unkempt. He smiled when Jean looked up at him, though his eyes were red-rimmed, and Jean knew he’d been crying.

Every inch of him ached. He hadn’t known it was possible to hurt so much in a dream.

Marco’s hands were scabbed and stiff with half-healed contusions. He reached out, cupping Jean’s face in his palm. The room around them was so white, and so still it seemed that they existed outside of time and space, brought here to exist together in this bright, silent place.

“I did better this time,” Jean whispered, “didn’t I?” His throat hurt, his lips barely able to form the words. His chest was an immovable weight at the core of him.

Marco smiled. His eyes grew suddenly bright. “Yes,” he said, leaning forward to kiss Jean’s forehead. His lips were warm. They felt so real. “You did brilliantly.”

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                 **EPILOGUE**

 

 

 

 

Annie came a few days after Marco, when the medical staff declared Jean fit to receive visitors. She came alone, sitting beside him in silence. Jean drowsed in her presence. She would speak in her own time, if indeed she saw fit to speak at all.

“Your poor judgement almost got you killed,” she said.

He looked up. Her brow was furrowed but her relief was palpable. “I’m impossible to get rid of,” he said, cracking a lopsided smile. And her mouth twitched, just a little. It was as close as he’d ever get to making her laugh. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I misjudged you. Without you, Marco would be dead now.”

“I told you,” Annie said. “Marco’s always been kind to me. I just paid his kindness back, that’s all. He’s a good person.”

“You are too,” Jean said. And he believed it. Even knowing what she was, what she’d become, what she’d go on to do, he believed it. “Thank you for everything.”

She seemed a little taken aback, but recovered her composure quickly. It seemed she’d had a lifetime of practice. “Get well soon, Jean,” she said. “They’re going to need you out there.”

“They?”

“The Survey Corps.” She pointed at her own badge, freshly embroidered, the stallion emblem of the Military Police. “You graduated in the top 10, you know. You could go anywhere you wanted.”

“I haven’t changed my mind.”

“No,” she said, her smile faint but definite. “I didn’t think you would.”

*

“You’re still going, then.”

Jean’s rehabilitation was slow. His bones had been shattered in the fall, and they were slow in repairing. The doctors were surprised. Someone as young as Jean ought to bounce back quickly. It was as though his muscles and joints were far older than he was. Still, he’d graduated to standing up, and to shuffling, though the finer points of movement still eluded him.

Marco, for his part, had emerged largely unscathed. The one scar he’d carry forever was the blindness in his right eye; the dark iris had turned a milky grey, and the eye stared perpetually out into the middle distance as though trying to decipher something hidden there.

“I am,” Marco said, with something a little bit like regret. “And you?”

“I’m joining the Survey Corps. If they’ll still have me.” He stretched his calves, wiggled his toes. The feeling was coming back, slowly but surely; the pain was ever present, a familiar sensation beneath the skin, almost a friend now. If he ever did walk again, he’d have to do it with a cane. Somehow, he found the image amusing.

“They’ll have you.” Marco sat beside him on the bed. His new uniform jacket was folded at the end, the Military Police badge staring up like an accusation. “Your mind is too valuable. They’ll have you working on tactics and theories. You could team up with Armin. The two of you would be unstoppable. And besides,” he said, nudging Jean with his shoulder. “You’ll fly again. You’re too stubborn to stay grounded.”

“I won’t be going anywhere for a while,” Jean said, gesturing at the white walls of his room. It was beginning to feel more like a cell. Soon they’d let him out into the barracks, and he’d be back among the noise and bustle of the living again. “They’ll have me resting up here until I’m fit to be discharged.”

“At least we’ll be close to one another,” Marco said. “The Military Police barracks aren’t far from here. I could see you every day, if I wanted to.”

“And do you want to?”

Marco’s gaze travelled the length of his broken body, taking in the useless legs, the bruised flesh, the ruined entirety of him. He looked upon Jean’s tired, dishevelled face, the stupid hospital pyjamas, the mouth full of teeth that would always be crooked when he smiled.

“I can’t think of anything I want more,” Marco said, and pulled him into a gentle embrace – arms feather-light around him, easing their bodies together. Jean tucked his head beneath the curve of Marco’s chin, listening to the thump of his heart, still so strong, even after everything. “We got a second chance,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of Jean’s head. “Thanks to you. Let’s not worry about what’s already been, okay? All of that’s done now. Time to move on.”

Jean thought about Armin. He thought about all of the previous loops, all his previous losses. He thought about the note tucked into Marco’s book like a precious secret.

He thought about forgetting.

“Yes,” he said, after a moment. “Time to move on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and it's done.
> 
> A few things before I leave you all in peace. Or in floods of tears. Or gnashing your teeth at the cheesy ending (I APOLOGISE FOR NOTHING)
> 
> The genesis of this fic was the beautiful art of [Barleytea](http://barleytea.tumblr.com/post/62215959506), whose timeloop AU idea was a HUGE inspiration in writing this fic. Any credit for the initial concept is theirs and theirs alone.
> 
> The soundtrack to this fic is largely comprised of a lot of Sigur Ros and a few other bits and pieces. If anyone's at all interested, just drop me a line
> 
> I can scarcely believe the amount of time it's taken me to finish this fic, and there were times when dropping it entirely sounded appealing. But there was a story I badly wanted to tell, and I sincerely hope I've told it to the best of my ability - and that you, lovely reader, have enjoyed it from start to finish. My final, heartfelt thanks would be to you - all of you, for the kudos and the comments and the messages, the support and encouragement, the patience when I was slacking. You have made this a truly epic experience and I will always be glad of it.
> 
> Time to close the loop, now.


End file.
